The Horror At Highrook demo is a dangerously enticing marriage of Darkest Dungeon and Cluedo

Watching the ambience of the gameboard change in the demo for haunted house RPG The Horror At Highrook can be quite captivating. The colors shift from daytime greyness to winey shades of sunset and then to pale lavender moonlight. There are intricate details to observe: a fleeting embroidery of rain, the flicker of flames in the kitchen and guest rooms, a fluttering of moths in the archives. The last time I was so mesmerized by a view of a house was when gazing out from the hamlet of Darkest Dungeon.

However, you can’t just sit and watch. If left idle, your characters will become hungry, fatigued, and unhinged, while valuable items like potent breeds of fungus will deteriorate. So, it’s important to keep your characters active. Assign someone to the kitchen to prepare a meal from the sack of grain you found, while another character searches the archives for the door code to the locked laboratory, and someone else explores the courtyard with a trowel.

Once your party’s basic needs are taken care of, you can delve into the mysteries of the game’s house, starting with the disappearance of the Ackeron family who once resided there. Notes allude to secrets in the sealed chapel and deep underground, with tunnels, “tears,” and unsettling designs on the walls. Yes, there are many similarities to Darkest Dungeon in this game.

It also bears resemblance to Cluedo, but with a dark twist inspired by Poe or Lovecraft. In The Horror At High Rook, you place your characters in rooms and provide them with items to complete tasks, from decoding books to surveying the area beneath the mansion with a spyglass. These tasks require specific resources based on character stats, which can be enhanced by other supporting cards – some representing artifacts, some “visions,” tendencies, and qualities.

For instance, the “Gift of the Bee” card could assist your plague doctor Caligula in her laboratory work. The card description mentions, “My blood buzzes, as if my body is a hive,” and adds, “I am in awe of the simple alchemies of the everyday.” There’s another “vision” card with simian properties that aids in the machine shop, ensuring that your Mecanist always finds the correct spanner at her disposal.

These paranormal elements, along with the visual design of the cards, remind me of Cultist Simulator – a game I enjoyed but haven’t played since its primary creator, Alexis Kennedy, faced harassment allegations from several women (which he denies). I’m pondering how this connection influences my perception of The Horror Of Highrook. It’s like one game is haunted by another.

The writing in this game is more elaborate than what you’d find in Cultist Simulator – a bit too extravagant when juggling card timers or attending to multiple characters in need of rest or food, but there’s always the pause button. There are some noticeable rough edges as well. Atticus Hawk, the streetwise muscle in my group of occult investigators, has an accent that I can’t quite place. Is he from the UK or the US? It seems like the developer, former Big Robot lead programmer Tom Betts, hasn’t fully decided. But maybe I just need to get accustomed to Atticus. I’ve only scratched the surface of this game in half an hour, and there are many more layers to uncover.

For more information and to access the demo, visit Steam. For a similar yet distinct experience, try the demo for Blue Prince.