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Papers, Please creator Lucas Pope has created a free Game & Watch-style haunted house game for Halloween
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Papers, Please creator Lucas Pope has created a free Game & Watch-style haunted house game for Halloween

It was the night of ghosts, ghouls, and hiding with the lights off because you suddenly remembered that you forgot to buy candy for the trick-or-treaters this Halloween (oops!). And what better way to celebrate the occasion than with a free Game & Watch-style haunted house prank from Papers, Please and Obra Dinn creator Lucas Pope?

The wonderfully titled Moida Mansion Currently available to play on itch.iochallenges players to enter the titular ghost house and find members of the Adventure Club who are trapped after following the mascot turtles inside. “Now it’s up to you,” reads the gorgeously retro-styled manual. “Sneak in and save them before it’s too late!”

In terms of gameplay, Moida Mansion is a relatively simple thing; It tasks players with moving from room to room and navigating through the objects within, searching for each one. Searching may locate one of your Adventure Club friends or reveal a secret passage or even a handy key. Or all this searching might attract the attention of the mansion’s “monsta”, in which case you’ll need to either sneak in or run away if you cause a commotion nearby.

Pope also released Mars After Midnight on Playdate earlier this year.watch on YouTube

For all its simplicity, Moida Mansion is strangely intriguing, and I’ve spent the last 20 minutes gleefully dodging Monsta and scouring the house to uncover its secrets. It’s also surprisingly atmospheric (and a bit tense) for a game with primitive LCD-style visuals, almost no animation, and minimal sound. What’s more, Pope creates an impressive amount of variety from a relatively limited number of visual elements, and better yet, the mansion changes every game. If this thing were real I would buy it in a heartbeat!

Of course, this isn’t Pope’s first work in the Game & Watch genre; acclaimed designer created a free demake of Papers, Please was released last year to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the dystopian doc thriller. More recently, he released his Playdate exclusive puzzle Mars After Midnight; “a cute, silly game about community”. Christian Donlan said this I returned in March.