Haunted House In Home?
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
Have you ever been to a good haunted house? Do you like to have the crud scared out of you? It has been announced that there is going to be an extremely interactive haunted house set up in Home this year for Halloween. It is going to be opened up in the new Hub as their first holiday offering in the place meant to replace Central Plaza.
“Dr. Frackenstone’s House of Horrors” is going to be a multilevel house that is accessed from the Hub through a steamy portal. Threads as well as Loot and Lockwood will be selling a whole slew of new costumes in conjunction with the release of this new attraction. There will be all manner of ghouls and goblins available for your enjoyment, some you may know (like a really cool Dracula ) and others you may not.
The gaming area itself will be infested with bats that buzz your head as you make your way up the winding stairs that lead you to the front door of the house. The porch creaks as you step out onto it and you can hear strange muffled noises coming from within. Occasionally a loud scream comes through the door followed by the sounds of chains and stomping feet.
Once you open the door you find yourself in a narrow hallway, dark and creepy, and suddenly all the noises stop and you are in complete silence. This is even scarier that the noises as it makes you wonder what is making everything so silent all of a sudden. Walking down this seemly endless hall you come to an archway to the right that leads to what might be the kitchen area. If you go into it you will come onto a horrendous scene of body parts and blood strewn about the place. As you search the area you will come to the refrigerator, dare you open it?
As you run screaming back to the hall you make your way down further until you reach a stair that goes up and one that goes down into darkness. Let’s try up first, so you climb the creaking stair, your hard breathing the only thing you hear. There seems to be a mist here flowing from somewhere cloaking the floor area. Still the silence pervades the scene. Then a door appears before you and you open it carefully, waiting for something to jump out at you. But nothing happens, so you make your way into the room.
This room is the bedroom, it has a tattered feel to it and the invading mist is here as well, making it hard to see. As you make your way across the room you see a huge crypt instead of a bed in the center of the room. As you try to scoot by it without touching it a ghoul suddenly appears behind you in the mist and tries to grab you and drag you away. So you run and find yourself in the bathroom; this has to be a safe area right? Wrong, as you discover quickly. Think Norman Bates from Psycho. So you run back into the bedroom only to bump into the crypt which suddenly slides back to reveal all manner of ghouls climbing out and reaching for you.
Barely escaping with your life you run back down the stairs and decide to go into the basement. Bad choice. The stairs here are spiraled and they go down for what seems like forever in the dark. Still no sound until you get halfway then you can suddenly hear a humming, like electricity or something, and it gets louder as you descend. This is where you come to a large room and in the center is the mini game that is waiting for your participation.
The game is consists of two parts. The first one makes you go through the house collecting some of the items you will need to construct a monster of your own. As you go about doing this you will run into all manner of surprises, including chasing ghouls and ghosts and the occasional bat buzzing you. You also have to go back to that horrendous kitchen to get body parts, and outside you discover a graveyard where you have to do a small mini game to dig up someones grave and collect pieces.
Once you have collected all that your checklist requires, you need to return to the basement and the huge table that lies there. You can then start the assembly of your monster. You have a few variables that allow you to make a monster that is uniquely your own, color and a few different hair choices and clothing. This is a fun and interesting tool that reminds me of going into wardrobe for my avatar. Once assembled, the mini game then requires that you place your monster into a chair that looks like an old electric chair from a prison. Here you have to do a series of button hits to power it up and bring life to your creation. It takes a bit to do this, as the button hits get harder as the life meter to the bottom right fills up.
Your reward for all of this hard work is an exact replica of the monster you created, to be used in your personal space as an ornament for your next Halloween party. It is life-sized, not small; kind of on the same par as the human and hamster plush toys already in Home.
Well, there you have it. Dr. Frackenstone’s House of Horrors promises to be a fun new addition to Home for our Halloween pleasure, because — let’s face it — who doesn’t like a good scare once in awhile?
October 31st, 2011 by Burbie52 | 2 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
Hysterical article! I laughed so hard I thought I would cry.
Awesome job Burbz!!!