Murder House Gameplay Summary and Review

Murder House by the indie horror game development team Puppet Combo, is a survival horror game that was released back in 2020. It focuses on a news crew that breaks into an abandoned house that belonged to an infamous serial killer from the 80s. The crew expects to do a news story on the supposedly dead killer but is that really true?

Summary

The game starts in 1985 as we play as a little boy named Justin. Justin is at the mall and just had a photo with the easter bunny and after the black screen transition we figure out that Justin feel asleep at the photo booth. We wonder around the now closed mall to see if we could find an exit or our parents. Instead we find a key to unlock the exit doors and we end up in a long hallway where a serial killer named the Easter Ripper appears. He blocks the exit, forcing Justin to hide in a bathroom stall and after the Easter Ripper checks each stall, missing his thankfully, Justin escapes to a staff office where he finds a janitor. Justin tries to explain the situation to him and the janitor doesn't really take him seriously but goes to check it out anyways. Justin stays in the office and not minutes later, the lights go out causing Justin to hide under the table in fear. Minutes later, we hear footsteps enter the room but they weren't the janitors, instead the Easter Rippers who captures Justin.

Three years go by, and we are now controlling a college student named Emma who is interning with a news station. She's put in a news crew made up of three people, Gary, the boss of the group, Dana, the reporter, and Tom, the camera man. The group arrive at the abandoned house of the Easter Ripper aka Anthony Smith to shoot a news story about him. Gary tells Emma to find a way inside the house after finding out that it's locked and Emma was able to get inside by a basement window and unlocks the door from the outside. as the crew gets settled in, Emma is put to a task again which is try to fix the power outage to start recording. As she explore the house, she gets hallucinations about the crew lying dead on the floor and sees a child running around the hall but she pays no mind to it. Emma was able to fix the power and they proceed to shoot two segments of the news story in the living room following in the basement.

After they shooting the two segments, Gary tells Emma to go and get them pizzas. Emma heads out to the car to discover that their van had been destroyed and a disturbing note saying they will be playing an egg hunting game. Emma tries to explain the situation to the rest of the crew but they don't take it seriously enough to care. Gary tells Emma to find Tom to start reshooting; we find Tom in the basement who knows what's happening and gives us a key he found leaving it to us to figure out what it's good for. As we leave the basement, we're met with Dana who is covered in blood pleading for help. Before she could say anything else, the Easter Ripper appears and kills Dana.

After this point in the game, the so called Egg Hunt begins. Emma finds her first egg "Death Egg" inside Danas decapitated head and places it inside a basket as instructed. After exploring the rest of the house and unlocking a certain amount of doors, we get a cut scene with Gary asking what's going on but before Emma could answer, Gary gets killed by the Easter Ripper while Emma hides under the bed. Two people have mow died and Emma is running out of time until the killer finds her next, she goes tot he attic where she switches out a regular light bulb with a black one revealing blood stains near a wardrobe. She moved it revealing a dumbwaiter which she uses to travel to the basement where we find a disgusting scenery of what the Easter Ripper would do to his victims.

After Emma exits the attic, she gets hit with frightening hallucinations and finds a VSH tape with footage of Tom being attacked by the killer and the killer hiding something inside a piano. Earlier in the game, Emma was given clues by some of the spirits of the children the killer captured; one clue being a note on how to open the piano receiving another egg if done successfully. Emma is able to find the last two remaining eggs in the bathroom where she finds the body of a real-estate agent the news crew was working with in the beginning of the game and in a previous room where Gary's body was hanging in.

After Emma had put all the eggs in the basket, she finds a door that was previously locked unlocked that lead outside to the greenhouse. Emma is now face to face with the Easter Ripper who had reveled himself to be Tom the entire time. He explains that Anthony Smith wasn't the real killer but his brother who took the blame for him to keep him safe. The player then has to fight Tom and after a while, he passes out due to blood loose but this doesn't kill him. A cut scene that later plays shows us multiple corpses of children aka is victims that he buried in the green house that came back to life and killed Tom bring an end to the Easter Ripper.

Review

Puppet Combo is one of the development crew I follow very closely because I'm in love with their games. Puppet Combo is not the kind of development team that focuses on graphics the way games like Zelda or Persona 5 do. Their games are made up of pixels and they don't aim for pretty but they bring attention to detail with blood, gore, and they can be distinguished by their unique VSH tape effect. The serial killer, The Easter Ripper, is in my top three scariest puppet combo monsters next to the nun from Nun Massacre and the Power Drill Massacre killer. The horror aspect is high throughout the whole game and their loud and random sound effects make you jump every time. The only thing I don't like about this game is the third person aspect, a lot of people like third person in horror games because they get a 360 view on where the killer is and what's around them but personally for me, I live first person better because I'm used to that kind of pov. I will say the one best thing about this game is the plot twist at the end, no other puppet combo game that I've played has a kind of twist like that and it blew my mind the first time I played it.