Exciting Days Are Ahead for A House of Many Doors

I like to describe A House of Many Doors as a game about procedural poetry and parasitic espionage. Or, if you want a more descriptive and less-quirky summary, I guess you’d have to settle with a 2D, narrative-heavy exploration RPG featuring branching storylines inspired by the likes of Sunless Sea and Planescape: Torment. Still, both summaries fail to quench my thirst when it comes to playing this game, although the situation is slightly more tolerable now that I know an alpha version will be available to all “MATRON-tier” backers this Friday. 

This was actually supposed to happen at some time during April 2016, but due to A House of Many Doors’ current state being in good enough shape the game’s developer has decided to pull the date back by quite the considerable time. (Wow, I don’t actually remember the last time I reported on a changed release date without mentioning the word “delay”.)

Developer Harry Tuffs also shared a whole bunch of other exciting tidbits about his game in a recent Kickstarter update, showing us some mighty fine looking screenshots featuring fully functional UI and fresh off the drawing board art assets brought to you by Catherine Unger. You can also see that sanity now affects crew members whenever your vehicle’s lights get damaged, instead of only working when a party member dies.

All in all, things have been looking pretty good for A House of Many Doors ever since the game tripled its £4,000 Kickstarter goal back in October last year. Zach Beever joined the development team to compose the soundtrack for the game, melee and boarding combat have seen some significant improvements and things have generally gotten prettier and shinier. Just check out Mr. Tuffs’ dev blog for all the details.

Oh, and in case you aren’t aware, we are looking at a game that actually received support from Failbetter games prior to its Kickstarter launch, with the company partially funding the project for £12,000 on top of giving its developer some much needed insight on the sacred ways  of crowdfunding and development as part of their so called incubator program. All in all, some pretty cool stuff.