From the creators of Dungeon Defiler, Slalom, El Codex Del Peregrino, Rotorscope, and Iredia comes a new, interactive game focused on a free, online experience. Unlike many other free online games, this point-and-click adventure would be released in installments of chapters, and you will be able to use a community account to track and record the content you’ve unlocked while playing. Reminiscent of Sword & Sworcery, Lost, Homestuck, and horror tales such as The Telltale Heart and The Call of Cthulhu, each increment will add plenty of new content, mechanics, and information for gamers. Without further ado, here’s the good and the bad of The Last Door.
The actual gameplay mechanics are not heavily discussed, but we can see that the game focuses on its plot more than anything else. There will be items and chapters to collect online, along with a likely achievement system. The forums will be a place for multiple players to gather together and pool their resources, whether through advice or straight-up walkthroughs. The scene with many different characters begs the question—will this be capable of multi-player? Even if it was a unique way of showing the developers, a co-op online horror point-and-click adventure has never been done like this. It would make the game stand out tremendously.
The pilot chapter of the game takes place in 19th century England and draws inspiration from Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. It’s difficult to go wrong with that combo, and their main theme and brief synopsis of the story’s setting show that character development will be key in the success of the game. The identity of the main character and the people in the photos is something to be found out, not something you are told. Kickstarter backers also have access to an Alternate Reality mode of gameplay, which allows them to see different outcomes than the main timeline portrays. Each chapter will be riddled with clues about the next, and the development team is in it for the long haul.
Unfortunately, the only thing being funded by Kickstarter is the game’s pilot chapter. If this game is anything like Homestuck (as they describe), there’s a large chance that we’ll see many, many more chapters after that. While having a large amount of updates and chapters is normally a good thing, the coins that they keep beside unlocked chapters in their mock-up of the website makes me nervous. There’s a possibility that they intend to sell extra content directly to gamers—making The Last Door focus on micro sales and passive income, rather than a truly free experience. Hopefully I am wrong about guessing this—they could still make these coins available in the game or through mini games, after all.
With luck, this game should stay as a truly free experience, much like Homestuck. Releasing small games in increments will take much more than what they’re asking, but hopefully the developers will be able to sustain themselves through advertising or the community so that they can continue to release chapters. Releasing a game as a webcomic is a rare and difficult achievement, so if you are interested in seeing it happen, please be sure to give their Kickstarter page a visit. The £10 tier is what will give you access to the Alternate Reality Game, so be sure to consider it.