A House of Many Doors

A House of Many Doors arrived on Kickstarter a game in which you are poet,explorer and spy.

trailer:

“In A House of Many Doors you are an explorer, poet and spy, traversing and mapping the House – a vast parasite dimension that steals from other worlds. You explore the House in a clanking train with mechanical legs. You will discover bizarre civilizations, assemble a dysfunctional crew and level up your poetry, while clinging to life and sanity.”

There is a pre-alpha demo and it feels like a pre-alpha demo, which is to say it feels more like a proof of concept than a slice of game. The text on the campaign page is a more convincing sales pitch than what is playable at the moment and I’m fine with that – this is a game, like Sunless Sea and Fallen London, that will be thick with words.

“I want you to feel like a particular type of 19th-century polymath – a Richard Francis Burton or a Gertrude Bell. An absurd figure with absurd talents who propels themselves confidently into absurdly terrifying situations.

“In the game you are both a journalist and a poet, and each of those careers comes with its own challenges to face throughout the game. The poems you write are procedurally-generated, and over time you will build up a proud canon of stirring titles: “The Troglodyte Vomiting of the Mirrors,” “An Elegy on the Reluctant Hell of Grief,” “Ode to the Strangling Toad.” Your poems and travelogues are your route to fame and fortune.”

We here at RPS have an affinity with procedural poetry and all of those titles are apt descriptions of my hungover Sunday mornings.