Puppet Combo have a reputation for making great horror games. They are considered and complex in their approach to gameplay. I’ve written about one on this blog before, Night Shift (my sixth “You Should Play way back in 2021!), which is, in fact, the prologue to Stay Out of the House. And, as it turns out, Stay Out of the House (SOotH) is just as good, just as captivating and tension-generating, as its demo predecessor.

It is a kind of horror immersive-sim, where you must puzzle your way out of perhaps the worst farmhouse in existence with religious television blaring constantly – all the while an enormous, sack-headed killer pursues you with a hammer, screeching incoherently.

The house itself is the best part of SOotH, of course. It is so well designed. Vents interlock, and take you to different rooms of the house. Rooms have this almost physical presence in terms of how grimy and nasty they look. The kitchen, where the Butcher prepares his victims to be eaten, is covered in blood, body parts, and scuttling rats that make the whole place feel oppressive and gross. After escaping the upstairs section for the first time when you find the screwdriver and crawl into the vents, there are two different paths to continue on with the game – and both are sheer drops down. Like all the best horror games, SOotH encourages you to do the pushing, to be the brave one. But, best of all – you can actually grab the lip of vents and haul yourself back up! This feature has been one of my favourites.

Despite the house being remarkably well-designed, with multiple ways to approach most objectives (at least the order in which you pursue subgoals to resolve each objective), the Butcher is still a highlight. He roams the house organically, and can flip furniture over if he finds you to deny you hiding spots and make the game more dangerous. On higher difficulties, Puppet Combo was clever enough to make the gameplay actually change on that harder difficulty level. Security cameras are added off the bat, for one, and the Butcher is more persistent in his pursuit.

If you haven’t played it, it can seem kind of derivative of other run-and-hide stealth horror titles, like Outlast. But that’s doing the game a remarkable disservice. Not only is defending yourself actually possible (though the Butcher can never, it seems, be actually killed, merely fended off), but it is much smarter – and harder-working – than those other horror titles in the same vein. The Butcher does not need to rely on scripted jumpscares to frighten, instead forcing you to keep an ear out for every clomping footstep, and hold your breath when static flickers across the screen, warning you he is very near. The game does not rely on darkness either to be frightening – it relies on the enemy’s AI, and the presence of the house itself, confounding your attempts to break free. And both of those things – coupled with the fiendish, trademark sound design of Puppet Combo – make for one tense, essential survival horror experience. The difficulty also makes it eminently replayable, plus there are a variety of endings to get, too.

A large list of items and mechanics – including a Skyrim-esque lockpicking minigame – keep the game feeling fresh and dynamic. The revolver is painstakingly manually reloaded, for instance, with every individual bullet needing to be taken in and pulled out, and the magazine needing to be pulled out and pushed in. This makes you feel slow, vulnerable, and afraid – if you’re caught off-guard without a loaded gun (or the gun’s magazine rotated to the wrong bullet), you’re at a huge disadvantage. Your gun might be loaded, but not slotted onto the right bullet – and then as you hear the tell-tale click of a failed shot as the Butcher screeches at you, flailing his hammer, you know you’re in trouble.

SOotH is tense, well-designed, with considered approaches to difficulty and survival horror. It is immersive throughout its runtime, and has some effective jumpscares (just like you have probably come to expect from Puppet Combo). As the game progresses, things get harder, more complex, and you have to worry about other members of the Butcher’s weird little family – but, after all, there are some things you should experience for yourself.

You can buy Stay Out of the House from Steam!

Thanks to Frankaloons for buying this game for me in the first place!