I’ve played the demo of The Horror at Highrook, and I have some thoughts, almost all positive:

Its Steam page describes the gameplay as “card crafting.” What this looks like in practice is that you’ll send a character outside in the Cliff Top area with the reusable Spyglass tool to get a “Raw Meat” card, which another character can take into the Kitchen and turn into a “Basic Meal” card, which one or more characters can spend time with in the Dining Room to lower their hunger meters.

This is the main gameplay mechanic, not only for basic needs and maintenance but for advancing the story. Spending time in the Archives might turn up a Cryptic Journal or something that can then be researched in the Study. To get Machine Oil (and a +1 bonus to relevant tasks in the Machine Room), you get a certain plant from the Courtyard with the Trowel and refine it in the Laboratory, once you’ve unlocked it.

Oh, yeah, most of the rooms in Highrook (that’s the spooky deserted mansion your party of occult investigators have been sent to) start off locked. Presumably, they’ll all be open by the end of the full game; the demo ends after you’ve unlocked the Chapel and performed a ritual that you’ve reconstructed.

There are some game mechanics that don’t really come into play, yet. The characters have levels, but during the demo they didn’t advance beyond level 1, so I have no idea what advancement looks like. They also have a madness meter, which never advanced far enough to have a noticeable effect; I’d have to play through it again and go out of my way to gather madness (by having a character cozy up to that child ghost every time it pops up) to see what it looked like.

Other than that meter, the child ghost only serves to block a random space in a room for a few hours. Ditto the cat that eventually turns up, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the cat had a much greater impact later in the game.

…spaces? Oh, right, presentation. Aside from the occasional conversation, which is presented in a standard visual novel style, Horror at Highrook looks like a board game, with each room having a number of card-shaped spaces in it.. To cook that Raw Meat, you’ll have to put it in a certain space in the Kitchen and a character with the appropriate skill in the space below it. If you want to get an item’s bonus to a task, it has to be in the room with you. And when you start a task, the room’s title turns into a progress bar.

Those timers took up more of my attention than, in hindsight, they probably had to. I was trying to pause between tasks for maximum efficiency and have at least most of the characters working all the time, but other than meat and gathered plants rotting (both of which were easily replaceable), nothing in the game actually put me under time pressure. I just assumed it would, sooner or later.

Anyway, it’s smoothly done but not technically intense, which conserves effort for everything else. This was a smart choice, for such a small team – there are six people in the credits, counting the two credited with the “game board” design, and it looks (at a casual glance) like it was a solo project until the art and soundtrack were needed.

I’ve already hinted at how smooth the gameplay was – it did seem to drag in a couple spots, but that was just me being obtuse about task order. (The instances I’m thinking of, I just needed to have the characters poke around and investigate in different areas to find the next plot-relevant whatever, or grind up two +1 bonus items to effectively study some whatsit.)

So, finally, on to the writing, which I won’t say much about here other than it has no huge surprises but is polished and effective. There was a subtle Dunwich Horror reference which struck me as gratuitous, but that small nitpick is the worst I found.

I want to see more. Wishlisted.