Once when I was in the third grade, our teacher wanted to get our entire class gifts for christmas. Weirdly fucking enough, however, we had to pay her money for her to go and buy us something of her choosing. She wasn't gonna pay for it, we were, and we didn't have a say in what we got. So, the entire class gives her $6.

So, come end of the year and she brings everyone their presents, wrapped in gift wrapping. Sweet, I think, this feels like a DVD box or something. Maybe she got everyone a movie! Or a game!

She got everyone fucking snakes and ladders.

So. End of third grade. I was sitting there, absolutely infuriated that I ended up paying $6 for snakes and ladders. I'd have bought 6 fucking chocolate bars for that price. How dare she buy me a game that I can't even play on my own because it needs at least 2 players when I didn't even have any friends.

But my disappointment there does not even get anywhere as close to the disappointment I had with this game.

Well, actually, it does. I wasn't all that disappointed in this game. I just needed to tie that unrelated snakes and ladders story into this review somehow.



The House of Snakes is the story of Carol as she decides to go into the spoooooky haunted house of snakes where spooooooooooooky stuff happens. So she does. That's pretty much all the story you're going to get, though, the ending twist is kinda neat.



Now as for the gameplay, there's a cool thing or two you'll encounter. The snakes and ladders minigame is probably the highlight for most people, obviously, but there's other neat things here and there. For example, I'm a big fan of that section near the start where you need to get a Lamia to look at herself in the mirror.

Speaking of the snakes and ladders minigame, it's actually very very impressive! I love the added twist with the items, I've always enjoyed people taking a classic board game and making it more over the top with added abilities and such. It reminds me of the idea I had once to make a Tic Tac Toe game where you hada wide range of items, from bombs that wiped out your opponent's X or Os to switches that when activated sent an electric shock through a wire that destroy every symbol placed on top of said wire. The House of Snakes does something similar with items that let you leap forward, roll the dice twice, shield yourself from a snake that would have sent you down, et cetera.

Sadly, my biggest problem with the game is that snakes and ladders basically took up the entirity of it. I was enjoying bic's puzzles and odd gameplay bits very much. Honestly, I have no idea at what point the swap happened, but I would assume Superstroke only added that last purple room and probably implemented the snakes and ladders minigame. While the minigame, as mention, is pretty impressive, I find it to be a shame that it so obviously took up all of Super's time and prevented him from making some more adventure game style puzzles in the vein of bic's half. Not to mention, the hints system really just completely goes under used as you're probably never once going to see yourself needing to use it (then again I never figured out what to do with the cheese). I would have loved to see more, but I appreciate that the game does not overstay its welcome either.



Now, visually speaking, the game's basically just RTP stuff, a clip art snakes and ladders game and a bit of other stock assets thrown in. The mapping's fairly decent and the game looks pretty okay for the most part. The most impressive thing would have to be some of the cool animations at hand, such as how the map scrolls from the first room to the second seamlessly, or how you see the curtain kind of slide to the side in the second room where you unveil the mirror. Even in the minigame, I love that instead of just going straight down when you land on a snake, you kind of slide down a route along its body. Regarding sound, the game is silent for the most part, but it's got occasional tunes in between. It's kinda cool how the game plays a playlist of songs instead of just having a looping one throughout.

The game is fairly well polished and I didn't really find myself encountering any bugs, save for one game breaking one. The only one I managed to find was in the final game of snakes and ladders where if you save and quit and then re enter, the game will crash when it's the opponent's turn to move.

All in all, The House of Snakes is a short game that you could play if you're looking for a very very brief and easy puzzle adventure, or if you're just looking to play snakes and ladders in rpg maker.

I give it three snek out of five snek.