As someone who’s quite fond of the PSX aesthetic niche in modern horror games, I find it a bit disheartening that so many developers don’t understand what made those low-res games so good, beyond the nostalgic coat of paint. That being they were genuinely fun to play. Timeless, making the most of it despite technical limitations. Not every aspect will hold up well, but that’s inevitable. Expected, even. The benefit of making a modern homage that harkens back to the era is the ability to fix the messy details that only contribute to frustration. This is my first Puppet Combo game that I’ve actually played myself, and I’m hoping that it’s a fluke that I found it so underwhelming, with little having been done to build on the genre.

On the graphics I just want to preface that I couldn’t even play the game effectively once I got to the nominative house, lest I be at a severe and eye-hurting disadvantage. I had to change it from VHS to the 1999 aesthetic. I’ll congratulate the variety of options; you’ve got VHS, 1999, 1995, and 16mm, in addition to a CRT filter, which is particularly cool. It’s just a shame the game is so prohibitively dark I didn’t even want to use them.

The beginning sections were without a doubt the strongest part. Short, yet promising more. I was familiar with the convenience store part before playing it, as I saw a couple youtubers play it previously when it was a demo. Yet even knowing how scripted your interactions are it still felt tantalizing to see where it would go. Then I made it to the house, and I slowly lost all hope, much like the main character probably did. If anyone ever played Granny (2017) way back when that was still talked about, know this game is super similar to it. After getting captured by the baddie in the final act, you wake up in an upstairs room with little instruction on how to escape.

On your first inevitable death you’re given a grim lesson on the parameters of sound you’re allowed to make before you alert the killer or his mother. And it’s harsh. Every time you’re caught you lose a day and start in a new room. By crawling through vents, creeping around dark corridors, and hiding in closets and under tables you have to find a way…. out of the house. With a much cleaner polish, this is just Granny on a larger scale (it’s a big house). Strike one to this nice little formula is the questionable decision to limit you to a very small inventory. In my mind that should only come into play in one scenario: when storage management and annoying backtracking is negligible. This game satisfies neither criterion. What this means is that you’ll likely find yourself with a hoard to rival Smaug’s gold pile before long, except instead of treasures beyond compare it will be rocks and old bandages. Yummy. Too bad you didn’t bring your Fitbit along to track your steps as you micromanage your inventory across this godforsaken labyrinth of a house like this is Minecraft. So reminiscent is it that I can almost hear the phantom screams of my brother telling me to give him my precious diamonds. Who does that duplicitous usurper think he is?

But for as feral as my brother can get, it pales in comparison to the sheer determination of the killer in this game. This guy is nuts. With ears like a hawk, speed like a track star, and screeches like a pig I feel like this guy would make a great candidate for a Most Annoying in Show award. Of course, his mom is even worse. That scooter-wielding broad is two parts granny, three parts Terminator. She doesn’t kill you outright, but if she sees you in her considerably wide radius of sight as she traverses the house for her warden-ly rounds then you’re dead meat. The game needed a much bigger breadth of breathing room when it comes to where you’re safe and where you should be on edge. Enemy patrols are slow but constant, making sneaking more of a chore hampered by the too-wide detection of cameras and enemy lines of sight. A slog in other words, and a doubtless strike two.

The next and final strike against the game is its save system. You find tapes around the house and put them in TV to save your progress. It’s an old time-wasting relic that has no place here. Doubly so when considering the fragility of your character’s glass head and the stingy amount of saves rationed out. This could have been solved one of two ways while keeping the save method the same. One: make significant progress auto-save the game. Or two: make tapes not take up space and add a TV or two in the main areas.

To reiterate, Stay Out of the House, while nailing details that evoke the era it emulates, does little to polish it. Under the cluttered, messy details of moment-to-moment gameplay is a promising love letter to classic slashers and PSX games, but unfortunately this isn’t Minecraft. And I don’t have a pickaxe durable enough to dig to the treasure that makes this game worth playing.

Um jogo que realmente me deixou tenso.

O lance do assasino estar na mesma casa, vagando, e a qualquer momento dar de cara com vc, isso me deixou BEM tenso.

A atmosfera do jogo é muito bem feita, cumpriu o objetivo. Os ambientes todos meio apertados e a casa toda zuada, realmente dá a vibe que um jogo assim precisa.

Além disso os efeitos sonoros todos estourados em meio ao silencio, isso realmente assusta.

A história do jogo, pra ser sincero não prestei muita atenção, então não vou falar sobre.

De resto muito bom, recomendo esse e os outros jogos da Puppet Combo pra quem quer levar uns sustos e ficar tenso.

This one’s a doozy. Brutally oppressive in atmosphere, with a dizzyingly labyrinthine map design and truly grotesque sound work. The way that Puppet Combo combines all these harsh elements together makes for a near-excellent title but its ultimately held back by a needlessly obfuscated gameplay loop- a survival simulator that lays out a variety of tools to utilize in an impossibly constructed field. It can at times feel defeating with how janky it is to maneuver these hallways as you run from the killer (and upon recapturing losing everything you’ve found) but by the end I was mostly won over by the inherent imperfections of the game’s design as well its patient structuring- the main objective not making itself apparent until well over a 1/3 into the story. I won’t lie when I say I had to follow a guide for much of this and despite that this remained a crushing, nerve-wracking experience to navigate as I collected supplies and crouched my way through tight vents, German expressionist rooms, and blood tinged exteriors (subliminal jump scares included!). The increasingly surreal and nightmarish aesthetic, already beaten and degraded because of its “VHS formatting” and clearly influenced by the work of Tobe Hooper, does wonders in instilling genuine dread and hopelessness in the player. I walk away with that and think back to my playthrough with fondness. Just never want to hear that animalistic screech ever again lol

Stay Out of the House é um excelente jogo de terror, e a melhor criação da Puppet Combo atualmente. O jogo possui uma fantástica atmosfera e com certeza vai te fazer suar frio em alguns momentos.

O processo de fuga da casa é extremamente bem feito na minha opinião, mas eu confesso que ver os mesmos puzzles de outros jogos da empresa se repetindo aqui é um pouco decepcionante, porém eles não são algo que realmente diminuem a qualidade do jogo. O assassino do jogo também é bastante marcante e sem dúvidas vai te proporcionar diversos sustos, a inteligência dele me surpreendeu bastante em alguns momentos.

No geral, Stay Out of the House é fantástico na maioria de seus aspectos, e com certeza é uma experiência que vale a pena.

Amazing game. It was actually way more fun than I thought because usually I'm not a big fan of stealth games, because to me it often feels clunky.
In this game it didn't really feel clunky at all.

The gameplay is fun until the end, the puzzles are creative and fun to solve, the PS1 kind of style is so damn good and the game has an awesome atmosphere. Especially when you start out in the house it is really damn creepy.
Oh and it's not one of those "you cannot defend yourself" kind of games. You can fight back. And the reload mechanic for the revolver is just chefs kiss.

Absolutely loved my time with it and I'm sure the replayablity is really good too, knowing that there is a hard mode which adds hunger, etc.
If you're a fan of horror games definitely try this one out.

Bonus points for the fact that this game is available on GOG.

Stay out of the house era um jogo "diferente" e com uma ideia extremamente boa e funcional, mas com o excesso de conteúdo tendo em vista que o jogo é um leve e traz durante 7 horas que foi o tempo que eu levei pra zerar, acaba se tornando muito massante.

Sei que o jogo inteiro gira em torno disso mas o fato do jogo se basear nesse modelo durante o tempo inteiro, acabou me deixando um pouco desmotivado com o decorrer da gameplay, mas tirando essa parte chata, o jogo me agrada em muitos sentidos, tirando a parte do bunker que eu acho levemente viajada, mas não é um viajado ruim, só não sei se precisava dessa parte, o jogo se destaca muito na parte da casa que além de ser muito bonita estéticamente na minha opinião, também traz diversos cômodos e todos marcantes e com uma função própria por mais mínima que alguns tenham.

Além disso tudo, é nitido como o jogo bebe de fontes como "O Massacre da Serra Elétrica" e entre outros slashers dos anos 80/90, e isso é incrível pois na minha opinião ele faz bem, mesmo tendo os contrapontos que eu citei no começo, talvez se esse jogo não tivesse esses pontos que me distânciam tanto dele, talvez ele seria um dos meus jogos de terror favorito.

Enfim, queria dizer que cada um terá uma experiência diferente, talvez a sua experiência com esse tipo de gameplay não incomode e você ache o jogo incrivel, mas estou contando com base no que eu passei, é um jogo muito bom e que realmente cumpre seu papel de dar medo mas que peca em uma gameplay de leve e traz bem massante.

Is it bad to stay in your comfort zone when your comfort zone is so damn good? Puppet Combo introduces nothing especially new to Stay Out of the House - you’ll find identical gameplay in Nun Massacre and a similar murder house in… well, Murder House. But by this point, Puppet is at the peak of his powers, his formula more refined than ever: the design of the house is delightfully grotty and labyrinthine, the puzzles are fun and fleshed out, the sound is suitably cursed. Most notably, the unhinged shriek of The Butcher when he pursues you, gives him creepiness as well as a certain vulnerability - it invites the player to want to fuck with him in his house; an appealing element of replayability lacking in the almost impenetrable horror of Killer Nun. Moreover, Stay Out of the House may not be Puppet Combo’s scariest game (it has its moments), but as a claustrophobic puzzle adventure, it’s certainly one of his most enjoyable.