A few months ago, I picked up several games in a sale, including The Last Door.

The Last Door is an adventure game split into four episodes. The first episode begins with the main character receiving a strange letter from an old friend and then traveling to his manor, only to learn that things have gone terribly wrong.

From there, the remaining three episodes deal with his attempts to find out what happened and the consequences of his investigation. I don’t want to go into too much detail, because it’s a pretty short game. It took me about 3 hours to finish the entire thing, with roughly 45 minutes per episode.

It’s a point-and-click adventure game, but since it’s divided into episodes, each episode has its own self-contained area and puzzles to solve. Some parts are tricky, but overall it’s not too hard since each episode is so small.

And the story is wonderfully Lovecraftian. The first episode is creepy on its own and really sets the stage for what is to follow, a story of people who delved into a world they should never have touched and now are paying the price as an ancient force stirs.

It also has a great atmosphere, especially due to the soundtrack.

Some of the episodes are better than others, but overall I enjoyed The Last Door a lot. It ends on an ominous cliffhanger (or you could view it as a dark ending with a sequel hook), so I’ll definitely pick up The Last Door: Season 2 to see how the story ends.

And don’t worry – my review of Shadow Hearts is coming soon as promised! In fact, I played The Last Door after realizing I wouldn’t be done with Shadow Hearts in time for today’s post…

In the meantime, don’t forget that you have until the end of this month to get my horror stories The Book at Dernier and It Came Back for $0.99 each, as well as to earn points and win prizes just by posting here on the site!

Over the weekend, I played the side-scrolling horror adventure game Whispering Willows.

Whispering Willows puts you in the shoes of Elena Elkhorn, a girl who heads to the mysterious Willows Mansion after her father goes missing there.

She soon learns she is descended from a shaman who once lived in the area and has the ability to enter the spirit realm. This ability is a core part of the gameplay, because as you explore the mansion and its grounds, you’ll need to frequently leave your body behind to solve puzzles in areas you can’t reach.

Entering spirit form also gives you the ability to talk to ghosts, which sometimes just provides a bit more dialogue but often plays a role in the puzzles you must solve.

Numerous notes left behind by various characters flesh out the story of what happened in the mansion, and it really is a somber story. Once again, this is a horror story that ends up feeling more sad and haunting than anything else. Overall, I enjoyed it, although the final sequence feels a bit rushed.

Meanwhile, the gameplay is pretty solid. It’s simple and the puzzles are fairly easy, but it has that nice gameplay loop I like of getting keys to unlock doors and gradually being able to explore areas that were blocked off before. The final chapter had some frustrating parts, but not enough to damage my impression of the game.

I’m not sure I’d necessarily call Whispering Willows a horror game, but it’s certainly a spooky one that has its share of creepy moments.

So if you want a spooky game about ghosts, a haunted mansion, and the tragic events that occurred there, it’s worth giving Whispering Willows a try.