The only thing cryptic about Haunted House: Cryptic Graves is how the developers could justify pushing this broken mess out the door. If there is one game that should be removed from Steam for being broken, this is it.

I have only played less than an hour and that's really all you need to see. So far from what I have played the game still feels like it's in Early Access. The voice acting isn't very good and the game doesn't run smooth at all. It almost feels like playing a game that is being streamed rather than something that was downloaded on my PC. Myself and a couple of other people have also noticed that you can't change the setting without it going back to the default settings after you hit apply. Now these issues (not the voice acting though) I'm sure will get fixed in a future patch. But for the $16.99 at the moment and it will go up to $19.99 once the sale ends. I would hold off on this game untill these issues are fixed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdzHR1a03tk&list=UUUI5L-pyfuGa2l_IlG1d7_Q

Truly an awful attempt. But there was so much potential here. Quite a shame.

First thing you'll notice is that you can't change the settings. It looks like it's changed but it automatically goes back as soon as you leave the settings page. This would almost be acceptable if the rest of the game were ok, which it isn't.

On my computer, which runs everything fine, the music pulsates in and out during the opening scene (and other times at random) until you reach the house. The voice acting is atrocious. Literally, I could have done better. The game runs fine sometimes and stutters at other times. Occasionally, the game jumps out of full screen and you lose control of the mouse and have to click back on the game again. AND the first enemy that you face will kill you repeatedly until you figure a way through. He's invisible and isn't effected by crouching and hiding. He just comes straight at you and kills you.

The textures are nice, but outside of that, it feels like something that you would download from IndieDB for free--and then get frustrated with and quit playing.

This is a FIRST IMPRESSIONS review. If you don't want to read to the end, here is the tl;dr: don't bother wasting your money yet.

So, where to begin?

Getting into the game was a bit of a trial. No full-screen, drop-down settings which didn't seem to work, and no graphics settings to tinker with. There is also no controller support so it's WASD and mouse all the way. Subtitle text is difficult to read (very cursive) but you might need to depend on them because the protagonist's voice is hard to hear. That's the boring stuff done.

Okay, on with the game then. The opening grounds are more the setting for a family picnic and not at all ghostly. Just one slightly curved path past a pile of shiny columns on one side, and what look like Mediterranean arches and Roman statues on the other. Where are all the old trees, perhaps an old spooky grave or low mists? Why not overgrown foliage instead of plastic-looking grass models that aren't animated? It's hard to miss these because the only other thing to look at is your irritating accomplice: Stan. He has a maddening habit of stopping dead and pivoting on one heel to face you, say something without moving his lips, then turning his body forward again a moment before his head snaps to follow suit. And every 3-4 steps he does this same thing, and I was just about ready to punch him when we arrived at the house. At last! Finally, I was able to barge past Stan to the doors...

Now, no haunted-house game is complete without a heavy, creaking door slowly opening to reveal a dark interior. So yeah, you guessed it - no creaking door... When clicking the doors to open them, the game zaps you back to the opening title screen instead. Oh! Has it crashed? What happened? After a delay, the game cuts to you now standing inside the house, robbing you of any chance to hear the doors slam closed behind you (apparently they slammed shut while you were left staring at the title screen - oh well). The mouse behaviour has been changed from mouse-look to mouse-click for no good reason whatsoever (a few curse words and bad tempered clicking fixed that) and so I prepared myself for what I hoped was a game that would be ten times better than the opening scene had been....

If you thought Stan was annoying before, he's no better now. After a few words, he takes to pacing the same route back and forth repeatedly and doing nothing useful whatsoever, so I'm glad he's not on MY pay-cheque. Oh wait - it's supposed to me playing the game, not Stan, right? Okay - lots of doors to explore, so I'll make a start. Maybe Stan will have paced the ground into an escape tunnel by the time I get back.

Now, I was able to recognise the doors easily because, like in any game, they look like doors. But for any gamers who don't know what doors are, you will be reminded with the word DOOR emblazoned in huge, white letters over them whenever you pass one. Yet, the game is much less helpful in sharing things you need to know - like, well, how to proceed for starters. You'll need to know because, whenever you try to open a closed door, a prompt helpfully tells you that "it is not open". Well, obviously - which is why I'm trying to open it. After a full trip around upstairs and downstairs without finding a single openable door, I returned to pacing Stan (he didn't seem to know what he was doing either). I decided to restart at that point because there was simply nothing left to click on except some electrical equipment which pointed out that it was, er, electronic equipment.

What you are supposed to do is poke pacing-Stan. He will then come tell you off about your inability to feel anything psychic (unfortunately, you don't get the opportunity to argue: "Well, Stan, the plastic grass and shiny columns outside really didn't help the mood, ya know?"). After that, it's back to trying things again. Still no doors opening. As pacing-Stan is the only thing that responds in the game, I finally attempted to poke his eye out with my mouse pointer and yes, I admit that was a little mean of me, but it resulted in him standing VERY close in my personal space and Saying More Things. For artistic effect, someone was pointing a flashlight up his face and his eyes were wide and staring, so I missed what he actually said, but I was then teleported into a new area (I guess if I don't know what doors are, it cannot be hoped I could climb stairs...).

I've now visited several bedrooms - and the graphic details are actually very nice. But after admiring the work, it's back to frustration. The first room I visited (well, teleported to) was a small bedroom with a wardrobe that won't open, an empty bird-cage thing and a child's drawings. The door out of here is locked (this place sure loves locked doors). Again, nothing seems to work at first, but it seems you must be VERY precise at clicking a set of crayons. You're told to hit TAB to see them "through the veil". Through the veil means a blinding blue and white swirl with strange ghostly noises. The 'veil' told me nothing about why I was staring at crayons, but I could now drag a trunk around the room, a trunk I could not budge before staring at crayons. Feel free to send me a walkthrough on that particular connection. And the game has been pretty much of this nature since. Nice graphics let down by frustrating and shoddy implementation.

The first scare comes in the form of an entity similar to urban legend's Slender Man. It makes a groaning noise then snaps back to invisible (no ghostly fade). I haven't had any run-ins with it yet. But what strikes me now is the HUGE missed opportunity of this game to be good. You can easily see where the atmosphere has been created, a foggy light makes everything a little blurry, the torn wallpaper almost creates the feeling of 'dank' and the bedding looks like it's stayed there unused for 50 years, so that's all nicely done. I'm sure our Thin Dude could be quite frightening if he didn't just jump in as a 2D cut-out and then vanish when you approach it. Maybe he improves later, but to find out I will have to seriously convince myself to continue playing - but I'm not sure I'm up to the task.

I would be cutting the game a little slack if this was an indie by a new developer and it was a couple of quid, but it's an Atari-published title. The rooms have atmosphere for sure, but it's all let down by frustrating implementation. I'm not sure whether this will be fixed by any patches. There has already been (to the developers' credit) a patch to fix launch issues, but I think the gameplay problems are likely bigger than any patch. Sadly, a game I pre-ordered and waited a long time to try, and now I'm disappointed.

We need more solid horror games like Amnesia:The Dark Descent: games that look good, have excellent pacing and atmosphere and can actually be scary. This game is not that. And I advise anyone to stay away from this title and save your money.

The voice acting is terrible, animations are poor, and its very buggy, I kept having to reload the first place I was whisked away too in an attempt to progress but was unable to do so thanks it constantly glitching when a certain event would not trigger properly. I had to watch a Youtube video to even know what to do when the event that should have allowed progression didn't work and then I still couldn't progress thanks to it being so glitched. Even getting that event to fire was a chore and required listening to more of the horrible dialog while watching our compatriot's lips not match what he said as well the subtitles not corresponding the actual spoken words.

There's been a glut of subpar horror games ever since Amnesia proved that a good horror game could work and not only be intereting but actually build a sense of dread that is rare in the medium. This is a prime example of a subpar horror game; it was obviously rushed and that shows repeatedly, from the aforementioned voice acting and glitches to the fact that you have to be wary of the mouse cursor clicking through and giving you control issues and problems getting the resolution set properly. Even the amount of plot I did get to witness was inspid and hackneyed.

Very disappointed in this title. The original Haunted House wasn't exactly scary considering it was the Atari 2600 but it was a great game for the day and even with the old limited graphics of that system its a far better game than this thing.

Well.. I was looking forward to this game since I had both the original 2600 version as well as the 2010 version.
The opening was nice. Graphics are really amazing but require a heavy duty system/video card.
The game itself is unplayable!!! Bugs galore. Game plot is unclear. Gugs galore. Baddies cannot be killed. Bugs everywhere! You're playing as a gurrrrrl! Very buggy! You craft things that you don't know what to use them for. You can see through walls if you stand close enough! In one of the large halls, there are windows with daylight shining through, but then there's a hallway behind the hall which is really confusing.
Then there are the bugs. You will get stuck way too many times and just quit playing and have to start over because there's no save point nearby.......
Menus cannot be clicked, you have to put the cursor off by an inch for the menu item to get highlighted!
I can't believe a respected company would push something like this out with all the bugs.
Not recommended. Frustrating. Unplayable!

Most bugs fixed, game run perfect on 780Ti. I like it)

The game is not as bad as most of the people are saying right now. The graphics are nice and most of the animations are quite appealing. The history could be better but it's not the worst you have faced before. And yes, it has a good amount of bugs but the developers are releasing patches every few days, I don't need to remember you the awful start of Fallout 3, almost unplayable, and now a lot of people love it. Of course the initial price is probably too high for the state of the game, which should have been released as early access btw, but with a few more patches and a reasonable price drop I think the game can be very enjoyable.

How is it possible, that this piece of buggy mess was released as a full game?! I cant even bring myself to write a comprehensive review on this, I am just so angry I wasted my money on the "game". Please, before buying this, realy realy consider doing so, you might as well be flushing your money down the toilet and you will probably have more fun.

Stay Away. Really... Just keep you distance and go play something - anything - else.

Even if the graphics are not so good, the game itself is very immersive. I cannot play too much time continuously because it scares me and have to wait until other day. But I really enjoy crafting new items to solve the puzzles. I really recomend this game.

Cant change my directional keys from WASD newb defaults to ERTF - nor can I invert the mouse which really breaks the experience since looking around is reversed. Even checked for a config or ini file but nothing, couldve ignored the other problems but I simply couldnt interface with the game properly. Needs a fix.

The game won't start after I downloaded it. Anyone have a solution. I am pissed and would not recommend this game.

Hmmm...so, Dreampainters, we meet again...

The first thing you'll notice when you start up Haunted House: Cryptic Graves is that the menu screen is a bit laggy; at the very least, that was the case on my snazzy new (not quite "gaming", but ALMOST "gaming") laptop which handles the likes of, say, Bioshock: Infinite and Outlast without any difficulty. The second thing you'll notice is that if you go into Options to attempt to rectify this, you apparently CANNOT successfully apply any changes to the resolution. Oooookay...1920 X 1080 it is (I usually settle for 1600 X 900, but let's splash out in this instance). You can, however, change the Quality level from "Epic" to merely "High", which mostly solved my problems it seems. Mostly. Well, praise Beelzebub for small mercies...

So yes, it's been noted by others before me that this game still has quite a number of technical issues, and it's also been noted that some of the voice acting is a bit sub-par. While our lead (female) protagonist is well-essayed, the first character we actually lay eyes upon is an elderly professor with all the charm of a rotting rodent who has, to be sure, been somewhat...let us be kind, and say "eccentrically" voice-acted. It's a well-known aspect of the entertainment industry that no screenwriter who wants to work in Hollywood would dare to place a single word in italics, lest a precious actor be offended by being told precisely "how" to deliver their lines. Well, the actor here could have used some such pointers, let me tell you, as he seems quite determined to place emphasis on PRECISELY the wrong words and leave pauses in PRECISELY the wrong places. But hey...the first Resident Evil has some of the most shockingly God-awful voice-acting AND scripting in entertainment history and that game is a ♥♥♥♥ing MASTERPIECE, so let's just get past the nit-picking and start following the man in question down the (both literal and proverbial) garden path, shall we? (At least for as long as he keeps moving, as he has an annoying tendency to turn around and just STARE at us, the old lech.)

Things fortunately pick up the second we actually arrive inside the house. In addition to the expected grand entry hall complete with stairs and upper landings which we've seen in a million games before - but which, I must confess, sends a small tingle up the centre of my ballsac each and every time (I truly do love this spooky old ♥♥♥♥!) - we also have some modernisms one would be more likely to expect in a recent "ghost-hunting" TV show; lots of electronic gadgets and such. Hmmm...okay...starting to get quite interesting now, and the sins of the first twenty minutes of gameplay/optimisation are starting to be forgotten. I then spend the next ten minutes either talking to my charismatic host (who seems to be temporarily caught in "broken record" mode) or searching about and trying the many doors now available to me; I only manage to get one open, behind which is what appears to be a decidedly innocuous and tiny bathroom. What now? Erm...I'll try and talk to my companion AGAIN; perhaps he has something new to say now? Lo and behold, he does! At the end of which we are abruptly transported to...

A children's bedroom. Another door I can't open. The only thing I appear to be able to interact with is a trunk, which appears to have a small trap-door beneath it, but alas...how do I MOVE said trunk? Basically I end up opening the trap-door, WITH the trunk still hovering precariously above it. I'm getting a tad confused and bemused, to be sure, but at least I now have a key to open the door leading out of this room.

A corridor. A plethora of predictably unopenable doors. One eventually opens, and a few notes, keys and a lever-pull later I'm in an alchemy lab of sorts (there's a couple of reasonably spooky scares along the way here, but I'll just bypass those for the moment and stick to the negatives, since they're far more noteworthy on the whole). I pick up what appears to be the "recipe" to a spell, and a nearby blackboard apparently allows me to craft spells by pressing "C" (good thing they're telling me what buttons to press in-game, 'cause there's certainly no ability to map controls in the Options menu, so we're flying a bit blind here). To cut a long story short, it isn't long before I'm now STUCK in my new "crafting" menu, so a re-load appears to be in order...but first of all, let's Google this ♥♥♥♥er and see if anyone out there in cyberland can tell me what the controls are in this confounded game, as I also have yet to work out how to access my Inventory...er, presuming I actually HAVE one (I do keep picking stuff up)...

No faqs - I'll skip the video walkthroughs, thanks, I'm sick to death of those - and a wiki page which is EMPTY. Metacritic it is, then! Oh look...this isn't a very well-loved game. I do, however, pick up a hint from a fellow punter's description of his own gameplay experience, and I discover that I should already know how to use my character's psychic "power". Hmmm...funny that...there's also something about an insta-kill monster just up ahead, but one thing at a time. Back to the game, and after some trial and error I discover that pressing the TAB button allows me to see everything in a blue-tinged haze with areas of interest duly highlighted. Now we may be getting somewhere! Since it wasn't too far back, I regress a save or two and redo the children's room, again working upon the basis of something I have just read. Ah, look...I activate my newly-discovered power, interact with some crayons on a table, and now when I return to the trunk I CAN pick up and move the dang-blasted thing, in a "hover-y" manner similar to the Amnesia games! BEHOLD!! THE POWER OF CRAYOLA!!! And yes, shortly after that, I did indeed go down some stairs and meet the insta-kill creature alluded to earlier; a creature I was supposed to be able to see with my power, I believe, but alas all I saw was my virtual self die twice and my real self hit the "quit game" button immediately thereafter.

I could mention a number of other problems this product has at this point - the fact that you can see through virtually every wall in the building simply by walking up to it, the fact that you get inexplicably stuck on anything remotely resembling a nook or a cranny - but what it all boils down to is, and it pains me to say this but...THIS GAME HAS AN AWFUL LOT OF POTENTIAL. They just need to FINISH the ♥♥♥♥ing thing. The current state it's in is barely forgivable for an "Early Access" game...and according to the Steam Store page, THIS ISN'T EVEN AN EARLY ACCESS GAME!!!

The developers, Dreampainters Software, released a game called Anna about a year-and-a-half ago, and while I ultimately gave that one a thumbs-down, I did concede that the devs showed definite potential, and declared that I was looking forward to their next release realising said potential. SO WHY DID THEY GO AND ♥♥♥♥ IT ALL UP WITH A GAME WHICH ISN'T EVEN FINISHED?! Man, I could almost cry. Instead, I'm going to suck it up like a man, and wait maybe three to six months before checking this game out again, by which time many of the aforementioned problems will hopefully be fixed. In all fairness to the developers, they do seem to be doing an AWFUL lot of updates of late, but for now I'm regrettably going to have to give this one a big, fat THUMBS-DOWN. I do look forward, however, to seeing that thumb do a 180 sometime in the next six months or so...stranger things have certainly happened...

Verdict: 4/10 (for now, at least)!