Terminal House, stylized as TERMINAL HOUSE is the first of a Japanese Flash Room Escape game series, created by GUMP.
A nameless blue man has been locked in a strange room for unknown reasons, and the player must find out how to escape. Each entry takes place in a different location, with a unique set of puzzles to go with them.
- TERMINAL HOUSE
(2007) - RENTAL HOUSE (2007)
- GUEST HOUSE (2007)
- BOAT HOUSE (2008)
Two spin-offs were made later:
- CHARISMA (2008), as part of a collaboration with J-Pop singer MR. KUNK.
- A sequel series, PLANETARIA, where a pink-haired human boy discovers an alien ship on Earth, with its own set of puzzles.
Tropes that appear in this game include:
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Tropes appearing across all games
- Ascetic Aesthetic: The alien ships in TERMINAL HOUSE and PLANETARIA have a sterile, compartmentalized design to every room, with white paneling and strange machinery everywhere.
- No Plot? No Problem!: Being Room Escape games, few episodes have much in the way of a story.
- Power-Up Food: In every game up to CHARISMA, "Energy-Z" energy drinks are often used to solve puzzles, from drinking them to increase your strength to even powering machines with them. At one point in RENTAL HOUSE, you have to make a new one out of two of them to be able to break down a door.
- Magic Square Puzzle: One of the two safes in CHARISMA is locked by this, and two locks in NEPTUNE and SATURN open this way.
TERMINAL HOUSE
- Amazing Technicolor Population: The main character is a bald man with blue skin and matching clothes. A woman in GUEST HOUSE appears with light blue skin and red hair as well.
- Apocalyptic Log: The first game includes a journal, presumably written by the player. Among other things, it mentions several attempts to break out and how someone else has written in it before him until it disappeared.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: TERMINAL HOUSE lacks the ability to save your progress compared to later titles. It's also the only one to have dialogue from the main character.
- Escape Pod: BOAT HOUSE Centers on powering up and launching an escape shuttle to finally return to Earth.
- Flying Saucer: A key mechanic to winning the first game involves taking pictures of UFOs abducting cows, which change color depending on how many things they've collected. The ending cinematic shows you being dropped out of one such saucer and then abducted by another. BOAT HOUSE also reveals your shuttle launching out of an enormous saucer in deep space.
- Hope Spot: The first game's ending shows you being dropped out of one of the UFOs you photographed, only for another to abduct you a few seconds later. If you're fast enough to click a certain spot on the beach, you can throw a rock at the saucer, but it won't do any good.
- Hot Drink Cure: Played with. The way to revive the mysterious woman in GUEST HOUSE is by giving her two cans of Energy-Z drink along with a dose of oxygen, precisely in that order.
- Remote Vitals Monitoring: The woman in GUEST HOUSE is tucked into a hospital bunk with an EKG next to it, showing a larger heartbeat pulse the more you aid her.
- Shout-Out: The room RENTAL HOUSE takes place in heavily resembles Veridian Room.
- Two-Keyed Lock: The exit door in GUEST HOUSE requires two levers to be pulled at the same time, and one of them won't engage until the woman pulls it herself.
- Where It All Began: BOAT HOUSE concludes with the main character's escape pod touching down on the same beach where TERMINAL HOUSE ended.
- Wham Line: TERMINAL HOUSE ends with this Engrish gem, complete with an Evil Laugh."You have escaped. But TERMINAL HOUSE is not End."
CHARISMA
- Big Red Button: Your sound mixer has one hand poised over two buttons connected to a sign inside the studio. A red one sounds a buzzer and shows an "X" if you do poorly, while a blue "O" button makes a doorbell sound and opens the exit door at the endgame.
- Dance Party Ending: If you do everything right, a talking flower and duck randomly join you in singing "Supercar no Pa-Pa-Pa". Then everyone heads out to perform this live on stage while the credits roll.
- Gratuitous English: The translated lyrics for the ending song, mostly describing various racecars.
- Left the Background Music On: Inverted. Your song's backing track turns out to come from a CD, which you must insert into a disc player to progress.
- Letting the Air out of the Band: Choosing to sing before solving everything else will sound horribly off key to your mixer, quickly followed by a push of the "X" button.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: You and your sound mixer both wear shades, but the latter's gain a noticeable glint in the end scene.
PLANETARIA
- Non-Human Sidekick: Starting from URANUS, you're able to revive a strange white....flying tentacle with an eye at one end. This becomes your sidekick for most of the series, and even gains a humanoid form between SATURN and JUPITER.
- Wham Episode: In JUPITER, once you fill a water tank to power a security camera, one of the computers activates and shows an image of the woman from GUEST HOUSE.
