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It's becoming grotesquely obvious why all our guests feel so...Uninvited!
A 1986 Adventure Game which is the second game in the MacVenture series by ICOM Simulations for Apple Macintosh, later ported to the NES among other systems. Known for its Nightmare Fuel involving The Many Deaths of You.

The setting is a remote, sinister mansion, into which you and your sibling note  stumble after escaping the wreck of your car. Satanic rites have turned the home into a magnet for occult evil, and you'll need to exorcise the heart of that evil before it takes root in one or both of your minds.

Or you could just call a tow truck. What's that, your sibling went looking for a telephone and never came back? Well. Guess you're on your own, then.

The game was also included as part of a Compilation Rerelease titled 8-bit Adventures: Volume 1 for PlayStation 4 and Steam on Oct. 31, 2017.


This game provides examples of:

  • Acid Attack: The servant ghost kills you by engulfing you into his "misty form", which covers you in a thick, sticky goo that turns out to be acid that not only hurts like hell, but turns you into a "lifeless lump of flesh".
  • Advertising by Association: The NES cover advertises the game as "From the makers of Shadowgate/Deja Vu". That said, this is the second game in the original release order, but third for the NES, so it only works for this port.
  • Age Lift: In addition to the Gender Flip, the NES version has your sibling be older than you, rather than younger.
  • Animals Hate Him: At the center of The Maze, unlocking a cage releases a hawk, a snake, and a cat. You're then given a choice as to what to do with them. Three out of four of your options lead to getting the crap mauled out of you. Also the guard dogs outside the chapel and the giant spider under the chapel.
  • Angry Guard Dog: Two of 'em, guarding the church. Very, very mean dogs.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: The NES version adds a couple in the form of a few new magic spells. In particular, the one that allows the player to simply teleport to the entrance of the backyard maze. Another is one that lets them freeze the giant spider, so they can leave the caverns if managing to get down there without a critical item.
  • Anti-Villain: While most of the things that inhabit the mansion are murderous or otherwise evil, there are three creatures (the Blothney Gem guardian, a blue guardian, and a cookie monster) in it that the game considers strange, but they are not willing to kill the player character and mainly block the way, which will leave if you leave each one their desired food.
  • Apocalyptic Log: Diaries relate Dracan's fall to The Dark Side.
  • Artifact of Death: The ruby in the NES version, where holding it causes you to slowly become possessed. The original game, which just has a time limit before you succumb to the house's curse, doesn't have the ruby at all. It's possible to pick up the ruby and dispose of it, but given the strict timing, it's better to just leave it alone.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: The first time you encounter a small key-bearing creature the game says you have to "question the reliability of your eyes." Even though it's impossible to run into the little guy without at least seeing a woman melt away to nothing before your eyes after pouring a ghost-banishing liquid on her.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: There's a large, wicked looking battleaxe that you can pick up very early on. Too bad the only thing it's good for is killing YOURSELF (Justified somewhat, as most of the dangerous things on the estate are ghosts). You'll later use it to break open a particularly stubborn cookie jar. And the axe breaks in the process.
  • Bedsheet Ghost: The narrator says that one "looks like the classic spectre".
  • Binomium ridiculus: Looking at one painting in the rec room makes the narrator state its scientific name must be "Uglius Maximus".
  • Bottomless Pits: You need to deposit the Big Bad into one of these to be rid of him. And quickly, or he'll be the one to do the depositing.
  • Bowdlerise: As was then commonplace, Nintendo had a few things watered down for the American NES conversion: crosses, pentagrams, and the number 666 were omitted, a ghost that on other platforms carried its head in one hand wore an intact head on its shoulders (a preview screenshot in Nintendo Power showed the original ghost, as it was covering the Japanese version), and the zombie had its hanging eyeball removed in its death scene. In addition, many of the death descriptions were toned down when the game was ported from PC to NES.
  • Butterface: The Scarlett O'Hara look-alike.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Subverted. There are three rifles hanging on the wall, but there's no key to open the gun rack. They'd probably do you little good anyway since everything you'd use them on is some kind of undead or demon.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: A strange example: you can defeat a single zombie by using the power of the pendant, but the pendant won't work on a whole horde of zombies. At the same time, you can't escape the lone zombies, yet you can escape the zombie hordes by simply ignoring them. Of course, newer players wouldn't know to do this.
  • The Corruption: A malignant force is gradually seeping into you and driving you insane, making the whole game a Timed Mission. Except in the NES version, where this only happens if you pick up the ruby.
  • Creator Cameo: In the About box, the developers' heads rise from graves Whac-A-Mole style and "dance" to Beethoven's Fifth.
    • A special acknowledgment is also written into an item description:
    It looks like a still reproduced from F.W. Murnau's film, "Nosferatu." There seems to be a familiar face in the background. On closer examination it appears to be Dave Feldman, whose wit and insight was a valuable asset in the creation of "Uninvited."
  • Cute Ghost Girl: Seems like this from the back...
  • The Day the Music Lied: The pleasant tune while meeting the Scarlett O'Hara look-alike.
  • Deadpan Snarker: The game itself. Especially regarding the giant spider and the coffin.
  • Demonic Possession: What's become of your sibling by the time you reunite.
  • Drowning Pit: The bathroom quickly turns into one, if you're silly enough to leave the water running. Though this turns out to be the only way to get into the final room.
  • Escape Rope: The Telemaze spell warps you from inside of the maze to its entrance.
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: The very first thing you need to do in the game is get the hell out of your wrecked car. You have three turns or so, before it goes boom.
  • Exploring the Evil Lair: The entire game. It's so full of EVIL that if you don't get killed by its horrors, the house will possess you instead.
  • Face-Revealing Turn: Scarlett O'Hara. She will turn around and show you that she is an undead devoid of flesh, and YOU ARE MEATSAUCE!!!
  • Facial Horror: The zombies in the maze have most of their faces rotten away, revealing their skulls. Outside of the NES version, they also have dangling eyes in their sockets.
  • False Reassurance: "Thank you for coming back for me, my love. You will be mine forever..." She's dead, and you will be too in a moment.
  • Forbidden Fruit: The greenhouse contains the most literal example. Eat it and you are DEAD. Though you will need it later for another puzzle.
  • Game-Over Man: A skull that shows up every time you die. "I GOT YOU!" / "Your quest is over..." (NES)
  • Gender Flip: Wanna know why this page refers to your brother as your "sibling" and not your "brother"? It's because the Kemco/Seika NES port changes your younger brother into an older sister. Since the port was originally Japanese, maybe they figured saving an older sister would appeal more to that market?
  • Ghost Butler: The front door, of course, refuses to let you out once you're inside. So does another door, when you trigger the endgame. There's still another self-sealing door upstairs, that proves a little more fatal if you're silly enough to use it.
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere:
    • The red tomato-monster thing that you need to uncage the hawk for. Even the narrative text gives up trying to make sense of the event.
    • Likewise the demon that's the last threat faced. The diaries all make Dracan out as the primary malefactor, and the revelation that there's another greater evil at work in the house kind of comes out of nowhere.
      • There is one EXTREMELY easy to miss line in one of the diaries, very much a blink-&-miss it, that states that Dracan's power is immense but "his spirit is weak", and that he is very vulnerable to evil spirits, but otherwise is the ONLY piece of foreshadowing to the final demonic spirit in the game.
  • Giant Spider: Amusingly enough (and in perhaps the only example in the entire MacVenture series), the game warns you multiple times that leaping into the den of the resident Giant Spider will probably be a bad idea. Ignoring the warnings leads to you being eaten, prefaced by the humorously patronizing message "Well, what do you know; it's a giant spider."
    • Also, if you unlock the secret passageway in the laboratory and head north, you encounter the same giant spider in the den that can only be stopped by Stillini spell.
  • Guide Dang It!: Three separate instances:
    • How to deal with the ghost servant upstairs. (You need to spray the railing with Spider Cider, take the anesthetized spider with you, and scare off the ghost by dropping it in front of him. There are clues mentioning the late servant, but not even the vaguest suggestion that he has arachnophobia.)
    • In the NES version, picking up the ruby slowly kills you, but you probably wouldn't realize this unless you examined the ruby, and even then it's somewhat vague. In the other versions you are put under a time limit to finish the game, leaving almost no room to explore.
    • At the very end, when the door slams behind you, how to reach your sibling in the room above the bathroom. (Flood the bathtub, and keep "using" the light fixture until it comes free.)
  • Haunted House: Where the player has to go in to save his sibling. Good luck!
  • Hell Is That Noise:
    • If "UH-OH!" could be expressed in musical form, it would probably sound just like the NES version's death music.
    • On the Mac, failure is punished with what sounds like the Reaper himself proclaiming, "I've got you!"
    • The DOS version punishes failure with a scary organ chord.
  • Heroic Mime: Played straight in the computer versions, but averted in the NES version; not only can you speak a few quips here and there, but your sibling can, and so can some other creatures.
  • Jacob Marley Apparel: The ghost servant appears like this if you turn on the light.
  • Karmic Death: The Giant Spider death. The game warned you not to go down that trapdoor, but did you listen?
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: You can know that the lady on the hallway is bad news when the cartridge's cover features her true form.
  • Luck-Based Mission: In all versions except the NES one, it is possible that you get hit and killed by lightning if you are outside when the storm strikes, it doesn't happen very often, but there is still a very small chance that it will happen and if it does and you are not indoors you will die.
    • The Maze or Labyrinth: normally if you go through it, things are fine, but there is a small chance that you might hear a dog barking and it scares you to the next screen of where you were going; this is normally harmless on its own, but if it causes you to run into a group of zombies or past a lone zombie, they will eat you and you will die. The chance is remote, but it is still possible for you to lose by something that is not your fault by random bad luck.
  • The Maze: Hidden in the chapel is a rather large maze filled with zombies, and which contains an item needed to unlock a vital area.
  • Moon Logic Puzzle: Seriously, how would you know that a ghost servant would be afraid of spiders? The hintsheet suggests it's the reason why he keeps his room so clean in an otherwise old and cobwebby home, but that's a real stretch.
  • Mythology Gag: In the NES version, looking at the apple in the dining room has the narrator noting it looks like a Macintosh.
  • Nobody Poops: Lampshaded.
    This bathroom is cold and dark. There is no toilet. Whoever lived here really did have a mysterious way of doing things.
  • Press Start to Game Over: You start the game in a car that's about to explode.
  • Press X to Die: You are given many, many, many warnings that leaping into the den of the resident Giant Spider is a bad idea. Ignoring these leads to your well-deserved death.
    Narrator: Well, what do you know. It's a giant spider.
  • Rapid Aging: In the NES version, eating a piece of fruit in the greenhouse will suddenly cause you to age a year for every second until you are reduced to dust. The other versions say that the fruit is poisonous and you collapse after eating it.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Two in-game enemies who are willing to kill the player character, namely the butler and Dracan, have noticeable red eyes. The former especially so and causes a more brutal death.
  • Red Herring: And HOW! Pretty much 80% of all the items you find throughout the mansion can be picked up, attempted to be interacted with, and are completely unnecessary to proceed in the game, though they'll clutter up your inventory (you can hold anything you find, but having to turn the notebook pages to find a specific item becomes tedious) and, if you aren't using a guide, you won't even know which ones to throw away once you find a place to do so.
    • One of them (the ruby) will kill you if you carry it with you for too long.
    • Of the six spells you find in the game, you'll only ever need five, and each only in one occasion (DollDoll for the gypsy doll, Thundede for the dogs, O Sesame for the statue head, Telemaze for exiting the maze, and Stillini for the Giant Spider (optional); at least in the NES version).
  • Rouge Angles of Satin: "It stares at you malisciously."
  • Schmuck Bait: Two of them. The prison cell at the top of the ladder, and the giant spider in the tunnel. A lesser known one is that you can crawl inside the coffin in the maze (often accidentally by going east) and die.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Dracan is, fortunately, buried within several tons of ice. Unfortunately, you need to get him out of there in order to actually kill him.
  • Sequence Breaking: A safe found late in the game can be opened with a chemistry based hint (a key of "gold, silver and mercury"). The solution is to concatenate the atomic numbers of these three elements in order and use that as the safe code, which can be referenced in-game with a handy set of cards. However, the code can be input even without consulting said cards if the player is already familiar with these numbers, averting You Shouldn't Know This Already.
  • Snakes Are Sinister: Subverted. During the cage puzzle where there are three animals to release from a cage, the snake will happily maul you if you wait too long. However, sparing the snake will actually let you live since it's too full to even move, the other two animals simply go to you for their next kill.
  • Shout-Out: You can find the graves of both Déjà Vu (1985) protagonist Ace Harding and Shadowgate Big Bad Talimar in the maze. Talking to either of them as zombies will have them give a brief description about themselves when they were alive. The phonograph also plays a (horribly off-key) tune from Shadowgate.
  • Southern Belle: Ha... hahahaha... She's the first obstacle you encounter, looking like Scarlet O'Hara from the back and a faceless skeleton from the front, and will brutally kill you with quite the gory description if you are not aware how to get past her.
  • Spell Book: The library has one book which grants the ability to use Cloudisi, Stillini, Thundede, and Telemaze once it's read.
  • Spiritual Successor: The Flash game Malstrum's Mansion is a Deliberately Monochrome pastiche of the Mac version.
  • Step One: Escape: As soon as the game starts, you have to get out of your car within four turns, otherwise you burn to death in it.
  • Swapped Roles: Most versions have you trying to save your younger brother. But in the NES version, you're the younger brother, with the distressed sibling being the older one (and also female).
  • Timed Mission: You have a limited amount of time to find your sibling before the evil presence in the mansion takes control of you. The NES version removes the timer unless you pick up the Ruby, which makes it run out very quickly.
  • Too Dumb to Live: The game tries its hardest to warn you about a Giant Spider when you come across a trapdoor. Eventually, the game gives up warning you not to go down there and lets you in...
  • Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Like Déjà Vu (1985) and Shadowgate, this game has a few rather obtuse solutions that the player would never figure out without a few game overs.
  • [Verb] This!: In the NES version:
    "Drink this!" you say, as you splash the water on the spirit!
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Killing your brother results in the demon escaping from him and taking over your mind, which leads to a game over.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Dracan.
  • Yandere: A possible explanation for the Southern Belle's actions. Reinforced in the Famicom version, where she claims that the player betrayed her before killing them, then supposedly starts crying as they die.


You reach the end of the page. Finding indexes, you continue to click and click, forgetting time. Soon, you realize that you have missed an important appointment, which causes you to lose your job, your love, and everything. Your life is in ruins, all because of your addiction to this site.

Your quest is over.note 

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