Burnhouse Lane is a good game that definitely had the potential to be a great game. It started off with some really compelling exposition and premise, but the narrative only gets messier as you get closer to the end of the game and the gameplay bits outside of the usual point and click problem solving are pretty luckluster at best.

I thought the setting of this game was awesome from the start. I got really big Silent Hill 4: The Room vibes and, while that game kind of squandered its premise of an ever changing hub area followed by the creepy outings into Silent Hill, I really thought Burnhouse was going to knock it out of the park, especially when you look at the devs previous titles such as The Cat Lady. Sadly though, I think the pacing here really soiled this idea and things were moving way to quickly at points to really make good use of the farm house setting.

I really liked how the devs didn’t have any issues leaning into the brutality and violence that they’ve done so well in their previous titles. They lead to some really memorable set pieces and moments throughout the entire playthrough. I especially liked the Bloody Mary chapter from start to finish. While the enemies and levels can feel a bit too random at times to really illustrate a clear picture of what this other world really manifests, I did think that overall the Burnhouse Lane areas were very effective in creating spooky and uncomfortable situations.

While the point and click puzzles here were nothing particularly extraordinary, they were all totally serviceable for pushing the game forward while keeping things engaging. All of the other gimmicky gameplay sections really fell flat though. I thought the weapon system would lend itself to some interesting item resource management you’d find in a horror survival game, but it really just boiled down to very linear enemy hallways where you would just mindlessly use all of your ammo to get through or boss battles that were basically just as simple. The dodge mechanic here was implemented really poorly as you can only use it to pass through certain enemy types and there’s always a huge QE indicator to show when you can actually pull it off. On top of that, there are some really busted platforming sections that just add nothing to the game. When you’re a cat, jumping feels chunky and unresponsive and they really do nothing interesting with it to warrant its inclusion here. And having the ability to control dummies just felt like another time waste whenever those sections popped up.

I also think that this game had the potential to have the player make really difficult decisions, and the game only really skirted around them when it came to execution. Just when I thought they were hinting towards a big decision I’d have to make, they would either make it for me or cut my amount of options to make for a less interesting narrative.

The powers here were another thing that had a lot of premise, but didn’t really live up to it. Having the first one be this mechanic that allowed players to compel an NPC to tell the truth was very cool and led to some actual revelations that would have been impossible to get to without using it. Having it be a limited resource always had me thinking hard about whether or not I wanted to use it anytime I was given the option. I was expecting the other powers to have a similar mechanic, but they were all just abilities that would passively activate only only activate in very specific parts of the game which was a big let down. And as you progressed through, I felt like those “tell the truth” options were spaced very few and far between.

The ode to The Cat Lady was cool to see, but just having Mitzi show up randomly in one chapter to drop some subtle references to her game was kind of a really unsubtle way of doing it.

The endings here were pretty good, and I would have loved to see the good ending on my first go, but after looking over a guide I would have never been able to naturally do everything that I needed to do to trigger it, which was kind of a bummer.