Dreams in the Witch House is a Open World Horror Adventure Game with RPG Elements, based on the 1933 short story of the same name by H. P. Lovecraft, though it also borrows many other elements from Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos universe. It is developed by the indie developer Atom Brain Games and published by Bonus Stage Publishing, and was released in February 2023.
It is March 1929, and it is the beginning of a new semester at the prestigious Miskatonic University in the city of Arkham, Massachusetts. One of the new faces at the university is the young math student Walter Gilman. Walter seems to be have a promising future as mathematician ahead of him, but his true passions lie somewhere a bit more strange and esoteric. Outside of his studies of mathematics, Walter have also always had a keen interest in ancient folkelore and old religions, and now he aims to make a big impression on his academic field by combining these two livelong interests in his first semester term paper. Indeed, through extensive study of the Miskatonic University's impressive collection of texts on the occult and the employment of advanced and somewhat radical new theories in math and physics, he plans to produce scientific evidence proving the existence of magic.
Being an outsider to Arkham, Walter finds a study apartment in a local boarding house owned by the elderly and somewhat crusty Ms. Dombrowski, and settles in, eager to begin his studies and one day present his theory. Walter, however, soon learns from one of his neighbors, the cryptic and aloof mechanic, Joe Mazurewicz, that the old house hides a terrible secret, related to its previous owner, Keziah Mason, as well as Walter's interest in the occult. Walter soon finds himself regularly haunted by horrible nightmares which threatens both his health and his sanity, and it is up to the player to help Walter not only pursue his studies, but keep him from losing both his life and even his very soul as he delves deeper and deeper into an eldritch mystery and discovers that he might be the one person who can stop an ancient evil from striking again.
Tropes:
- The Alcoholic: Joe Mazurewicz's penchant for bootleg whiskey has settle him with this reputation. The player can turn Walter into one too if they try to make him cope with his slipping sanity through booze.
- Cranky Landlord: Downplayed. Ms. Dombrowski is not entire unreasonable, but her house rules, such as forbidding visitors after 5 pm are noted by Walter to be a bit strict. She also gets annoyed when Walter tries to bring up the rumors of the Mason House's colorful past, and shots down his attempts to talk about it.
- Golden Ending: While
quite difficult, it is indeed possible to have Walter survive the ordeals of the story and brushes with the Elder Gods with his physical and mental health relatively intact, defeat both Keziah Mason and Brown Jenkin, foil the cult's ritual and set them back years, if not decades, by producing enough evidence of their nefarious activities to convince the police to perform a raid on their May-Eve gathering, while also personally intervening to save the life of the child they were planning to sacrifice and return him to his mother, while also accomplishing the academic feats of finishing his term paper and presenting his theory and doing well on his exams, if not outright passing them with flying colors. - In Vino Veritas: When sober, Joe Mazurewicz isn't too eager to talk about the secrets of the Mason House. Walter has to ply him a bit with some liquid courage before he becomes willing to share what he knows.
- NPC Scheduling: Most NPCs of the game has a schedule of their own and can only be encountered in certain locations at certain times of day. Joe Mazurewicz, for instance, will be working his factory job for most of the day and can therefore only be met in his apartment in the evening. Professor Henry Armitage, meanwhile, will be in his office at the university most days, but he goes home in the afternoon.
- Randomly Generated Levels: Downplayed. The layout of the game and the routines of the characters are always the same, but every time the player begins a new game certain events will change and happen at different times, the weather will be semi-randomized, while some items will be in other places, meaning that they cannot always rely on what they learned in a previous playthrough to be true in their current one.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: As the curator of the Miskatonic University's "Secret Collection" and having had his own personal encounters with the supernatural in the past, Professor Henry Armitage is willing to believe some of Walter's claims regarding his strange experiences, and provided that Walter can produce physical evidence backing his stories, he will go as far as personality vouching for Walter's trustworthiness if he tries to alert the local police to the cult's activities.
- Resources Management Gameplay: The player is regularly challenged with keeping Walter well-fed and rested, warm, and dry. If Walter goes hungry, tired, cold, or wet for too long at a time, it will adversely affect his health, making him more susceptible to getting sick, make it harder for him to recover from injuries and study, and drag down his exam scores. Making him eat usually costs a ration, and he can recover from rain and cold by being near a lit fireplace, though if he uses the one at home, this means he will have to supply his own firewood. On some days, the weather will affect Walter's wellbeing, and nightmares or strange noises in his apartment at night will conspire to ruin his sleep. The player can give Walter some more permanent protection against the weather by making him buy a raincoat or a pair of insulated trousers, and help him sleep better with a pair of earplugs, and certain medicines (or alcohol and cigarettes) will temporarily soothe his nerves as he gets into traumatizing encounters with the supernatural. Most of these thing costs money, and Walter is on a tight budget, as his only real income at the beginning of the game is his weekly allowance from his aunt, though she will give him a bonus if he does well on his exams. As the game progresses, Walter will find other ways of earning a bit of money.
- Sanity Meter: Walter's mental wellbeing can be gauged through his Sanity stat, which starts out at 10, but it increasingly lowers as he experiences more and more supernatural events and his Occult stat rises. Completing a task on his to-do-list or doing something comforting, like talking to one of his friends, allows him to occasionally replenish a little bit of Sanity.
- Timed Mission: Walter has the months of March and April to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding the Mason House, which translates to 60 in-day games. Depending on how much of the conspiracy Walter has uncovered at this point, one of the game's Multiple Endings will be triggered, provided Walter doesn't die before then.
- You Dirty Rat!: Keziah Mason's Familiar, Brown Jenkin, is a particularly oversized (as in cat-sized), ugly, and actively malevolent rat with red eyes, who will occasionally keep Walter awake at night by scurrying around in the walls and will sometimes even attacking him in his sleep, causing him to suffer injuries.
