With a thousand PC games to choose from in my Steam/Epic/GOG/Itch libraries, mostly unplayed, you’d think I would never need to even look in the Steam store for something else to pass the time, right? And, if I did, you’d expect I might be picking out some high profile or highly lauded title that I don’t already own, yeah? Well, no. For I stumbled across this shambolic looking free-to-play clicker game instead, and then spent THIRTY HOURS completing it. No, you’re an idiot.
The theme here is a haunted house, so instead of cookies or paperclips you buy gravestones and pumpkins with which to bump up your scream income. The mechanics are the same as most other clickers – the more you buy the more you earn more quickly and the more the next things cost. It’s a Numbers Go Up game.
What’s different, is that there are a few minigames that make up part of the game. You get prize spinners to boost your income a bit or give you free items, you can play a game of Simon on the windows of the house, and there are ghosts to catch and witches to melt. There’s also two more clicker games within the clicker game – one set in the basement where you earn “preparedness” by hoarding water and food and toilet rolls and other pandemic stuff, and another which opens up after completing the main game where you deck out the interior of the house with candles and spiders and other spooky things. I also completed the basement, but I draw the line at the house hallway – many of the “jumps” up to the next power-of-ten are missing, so it just takes even longer to get anywhere.
It’s mindless, somehow addictive, and although it has IAPs I had no need of them at all.