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At times, during a review process, an acknowledgment hits. That video games are amazing.
They can entertain and tell amazing new stories that play with the boundaries of fantasy and reality in clever new ways. I’m not just talking about the big games either, those with their million-dollar advertising budgets and huge studio spaces. I’m talking about the small independent teams, tucked up in micro offices or bedrooms, dreaming up worlds, places and new characters.
Burnhouse Lane is one of those games. One of those that comes from a small team; a game that is both amazing and unique. And it all starts with death…
Burnhouse Lane comes from Harvester Games; a team who have a proven record of delivering exciting new horror games to the market. It all starts with a nurse in an apartment, on the verge of killing herself because, after having lost her husband to illness, has also been diagnosed with lung cancer. After a failed attempt at suicide she gets a call from an agency to travel to the countryside to be the nurse for an old farmer called George. After taking care of him, making sandwiches and the like, Angie soon discovers a strange door in the basement. It leads to Burnhouse Lane.
Burnhouse Lane is a strange other world where the lost live; a sort of purgatory. She meets an entity called The Burned Cat who offers her a deal where she has to take four lives, and he will cure her cancer. She accepts and goes on a strange journey…
This journey takes you on a weird and wonderful adventure that is full of deep horror, strange myths, and unusual dream-like places. The writing and storytelling mix together a blend of serial killers, magical realism, and animal magic. It’s unlike anything you would have played before and is truly captivating from start to finish. The characters are brilliantly realised and written, from the kebab shop owner, Omar, to the American actress you rescue from a disturbed deranged priest.
The gameplay is simple but effective. It’s presented in a 2D world where you can move the character right and left. There is a run button – something which is very important later on – and you can interact with items. Saving the game utilises a rather controversial and unusual method, where you have to look for ashtrays dotted about the levels, taking a cigarette break as save points.
How the game works is that you have a checklist of things to do and complete. In the real world, this might see a focus on smaller tasks, like making George a sandwich. Here you get a list of ingredients to put together a sandwich of your choice. There are small fetch quests and puzzles to solve by using items you find, too. In other moments in Burnhouse Lane you might get involved in combat. You pick up some weapons along the way, like guns and a trusty axe, but at other times the best course of action is to hide in areas or run like the wind. It’s almost like a point-and-click adventure at times.
The exploration of the different areas works amazingly well, highly intriguing as to how you might tackle some platforming elements. In fact, there are moments when you get to possess cats. One cat has the power to control mannequins whilst another gives the chance for you to access hard-to-reach areas. These parts of the Burnhouse Lane gameplay are the weakest; rather annoying in accuracy.
However, the game’s visuals are stunning. Regarding the characters themself, the developers have made the most of hand-drawn visuals, animating them as the characters. This gives Burnhouse Lane a gorgeous look; one that is strange and unsettling. The backdrops are great too, as you travel through the real and the very strange locations on offer. Then there are the colour schemes – from the wonderful skies to the interior of a kebab shop which has seen better days. It is all genius stuff.
The soundtrack is equal to those visuals. It brings together a mixture of true horror tension and some original music choices to fit with the Burnhouse Lane vibes perfectly. The voice cast is outstanding too; truly bringing the characters to life.
Burnhouse Lane will capture you from start to finish, immersing you through its ten-hour running time. It reminds of the best British horror films from the 1970s, mixing different planes of existence in clever and rewarding ways. The characters you meet are fantastic and at times the horror is gory and very disturbing. There are certainly enough interesting dynamics in the gameplay and some bits of puzzle solving that can be hard. The only weakness is found in some of the platforming gameplay when you are a cat.
But I can forgive that because Burnhouse Lane is a truly original masterpiece.
Did I ever tell you that I love games?