The Horror at Highrook

Developer: Nullpointer Games

Release Date: To be announced

The Horror at Highrook is an occult card crafting RPG. Explore a haunted mansion with your team of investigators, summon dark entities, craft powerful protections, uncover the fate of the missing family, and choose your own path through the darkness.

I have been searching for my perfect crafting game for a while now. So often I have the urge to gather stuff to make things, to distribute them, to gather more and make more, but I have yet to find the jackpot game that satisfies my very specific itch. I didn’t even consider I would find it here. The Horror at Highrook demo allows players to play through Chapter 1 of the game. I could have played a LOT more. I am not saying that this is the perfect game or the jackpot, but based on this first hour, it not only hit that compulsive management corner of my brain, but made my eyes sparkle at the idea of increasing complexity. All of this, seasoned with a really enjoyable flavour made this demo an absolute treat.

The game begins with an instruction manual which I found incredibly easy to read. It suits this game a lot more than a conventional tutorial would, immediately setting you loose playing god over a group of investigative explorers. The house that we are inspecting is our board, the team and their belongings are our cards, and it is up to us to set everyone away doing tasks, using the resources that we have to discover new tasks to perform.

As we perform our tasks we find journal pages and other bits of lore scattered throughout the mansion. This guides us forward as we follow in the footsteps of the family that lived here. Doing questionable rituals to appease eldritch horrors is never a good idea, with one exception. Luckily for us, we are doing it to rescue someone, which makes it absolutely fine, and we can all be sure that nothing terrible will happen.

I like the cast of characters. One of them wants to leave – rightfully so might I add – but is reluctantly convinced to stay due to history with another character and despite the fact that I have only known them for 30 minutes, I totally believe it. I didn’t expect to empathise with a card on a board but it is the little details like that that engage the player within the story and make it a memorable experience.

It is hard to put my finger on the exact reason this game hits for me. It has a lot of elements that I like individually, like crafting, management, cosmic horror, character interactions, investigation, and even exploration somehow works considering we are on a static board. Everything feels additive to the next thing with no padding involved. So far it has been linear and I imagine the rest will continue to be the same, I just hope the game continues to feel as fresh as the beginning, as getting new cards is a dopamine rush that only has limited legs. Either way, I will certainly be keeping an eye on the game, consider it wishlisted!

Demo Length – 1+ hour
At a glance
+ Easy to learn.
+ Drip fed the story.
+ The character interactions.
+ The theming is great, especially when surprises happen.
+ I just love arranging my cards on a mystery mansion.
+/- On one hand I could see the game remaining engaging with complexity, but on the other I could see it getting repetitive. Hoping for the former.
+/- We can choose the way we manage our time and characters but the overall story so far appears to be linear.