I Hate My Flatmates

"I hate my flatmates" is a game about comraderie between quirky flatmates, and a murder plot. It is comedy-driven. And decent.

This is a little bit of a strange story-driven game, or rather dialogue-driven game, where gameplay is rudimentary and only a means to progress the plot, the actual plot is not taken seriously until the very last minute, and where the constant hate-love between the party makes for the majority of the game.

Does it execute all parts well? Not really.
Is it trying to? Nope.

So it works as intended, it is rough around the edges, lacks some polish here and there, and is amusing. I did not find me actually laughing, but it was amusing. It has a more serious edge for the ending, and I think it works very well for what it is, but could work much better if the storyframe surrounding it makes more sense.

You start out as a simple tenant in "the worst flat ever", with the "worst flatmates" and the "worst landlord ever". The latter is possibly true.
Everyone is highly unique and this makes for an oddball troupe coming to life. We have a cosplay videogame queen who is obsessed with maze games, an artist who likes to throw knife-like objects, a fruit/veggie loving bodybuilder capable of changing his hair-color, and lastly our protagonist, a weapon lover who gathers spears, swords and everything related for hobby and work purposes.

This combination is really what drives this game, as the main amusement are the weird quirks, guesses and possessions of each character.
That, plus the numerous bickering scenes where characters make fun of each other, but are still joined "by their mutual hatred for their landlord". These quirks are sometimes random, sometimes endearing, and sometimes lifelike - like having a porn-title between other magazines.
There are some great jokes with leadership (as you take on the role of leader) and other little touches.


You get it.


The strange thing here is that the frame makes little sense - why do they hate each other so much? They seem to get along well instead. Why do they know each other so well when they each have their own room? Why are they bearing with unreliable electricity, a horrible personality and other bad bad landlord related issues when they could search for another flat instead, why do they not even consider it?

In this mix you have then the appearance of a masked creepy guy who wants to trap and kill one of them. (your landlord never makes an appearance and so can forever stay satan himself).
Strangely, our interactions of our hot-blooded party members are putting up with him and not even trying to fight him or arm themselves even after he declared the intention to murder people up until the very very last minute (and that with a plethora of different weapons to choose from - and our weapon lover chooses a strangely useless crossbow for himself instead of easy-to-wield spears). You completely let him have his way, in the sense that you just ignore whatever he says - which given the gameplay, you do. At least this was taken up in jokes, altho the "laughing in front of his face part" seemed rather forced and really not funny. Other jokes, such as completely ignoring his monologue were clever and enjoyable.

Anyway, this is where towards the end a little bit of a serious edge comes to shine, and the pressured targeted party member allows for a character-specific ending with a little bit of backstory and an emotional moment - follow by their goofy chat. I thought this was done well as it not too long or serious for the general atmosphere created - it simply shows different states and moods of the characters (they protagonist gets frustrated/angry once as well), and without making it that big a deal.
This makes it natural, but also only a sidestory giving this ride as a whole little direction. I liked that the whole creepy guy story was mostly kept to notes scattered throughout the rooms. While it makes no sense for items to suddenly appear (you could have them there - like the ladder - and just left them there before you need to pick them up!), the notes do make more sense as the creepy guy could be leaving them there right now. They give you a little bit of the actual ongoing "plot" without needing to make it a point of conversation.


Aesthetics is mostly RTP with nicely drawn facesets, and while it looks pretty and solid and is utilitarian for what it is, I do see problems in the general layout.

You will traverse the house and there are a couple of things that make this less fun as it should be - yes, you will backtrack a lot. Yes, you will randomly knock at every door until you know where everything is, and until you find the one right door.
There are a couple of things that make this counter-intuitive or less fun than it should be. There are stairs going up or down look the same.
You will at some point need to go to the roof and the basement. The basement is next to the front door (or backdoor), whereas to reach the roof you need to go a floor below to then use stairs up. Perhaps it just looks to me the wrong way around and I'm going up twice. There are no stairs to the basement, however, and the main difference is the stone-tiling.


Am I really the only one who didn't think I could find a set of rooms to the left? I stumbled into it later, at least.

There are rooms after using the first stair-case that are barely - you can travel further to the left, altho neither the layout of the floor above/below indicates it existing, nor does any of the mapping does.
Some rooms have only light indications (like the basement), but make it a little bit frustrating to explore.

Many rooms are left with simply a "locked" sound when you try to open them until you need to get into them. If you had simply mentioned whether it was the "abandoned room" or similar beforehand, you would not have to search the whole building for one door. As you do not know what rooms they they might lead to, this is what you do.
Thankfully the building is small enough for this to be bearable, but small hints would really have made this a lot easier. Having the hallway extend further to the left after going up the stairs it would seem much more likely for there to be a room.

There is a puzzle (the only one) where you need to memorize four directions to open a door - and while the characters proclaim you cannot take the note with you, as it is glued, you cannot view it again either. I did not pay full attention to the directions and had to reload (I thank you, multiple savefiles) as you have no way of getting the combination to view again. And 4^4 combinations to try out are not fun, or a worthy time investment. This would be an easy fix as well - simply have the option to view the note on the desk.
There are a few events that repeat itself if you did not get the necessary item in question - if you are trying to get the ladder from Daryll's (the bodybuilder's) room, and leave before you got it, and return to the basement, you will view the whole conversation with creepy guy again and be set back.

Otherwise you traverse rooms in search of keys (and strangely do not take any other keys with you other than the one you need right now, or the key for your own room), or other items to help you along. It seems rather arbitrary as you seem to just pick up things for the sake of picking them up, and leaving items behind without reason.
As I said, gameplay is only a means to lengthen the game and help you along - it sets the pacing so you have tiny breaks between dialogue as well.
You also play two maze games and while I found this to be a fun distraction, I doubt it suits the general atmosphere well and feels shoe-horned into the story.

Music is the puzzle-RTP one for the most part which suits it well, with a few vocal tracks. The vocals and the different style works well for the last confrontation, but the sudden "romantic cut-scene" vibe for a not-really romantic cutscene felt completely out of place.

All in all - this is decent.
It is an amusing play, with meh gameplay which is thankfully utilitarian. It has a few more serious moments, too. It has too many themes and different things coming together to make any of them outstanding, but it has solid humor and great characters.
If you like comedy, sure, go ahead.