It might be a stretch to call any game that focuses on supernatural sicknesses and brain-devouring gods “relaxing,” but a new card-based RPG comes pretty close. Combining the feel of a board game with the simulation elements of games like Cultist Simulator makes the new Steam release a chill narrative card game, even with its grim cosmic horror story.
The Horror at Highrook is the latest game funded by Outersloth, an indie game fund started by Among Us developer Innersloth. The game tells the story of an eccentric aristocrat obsessed with the occult, told from the perspective of a group of investigators dispatched after he disappears with his wife and son. As the game goes on, the group slowly uncovers the truth of what happened to the Ackeron family through timed card interactions, turning what at first looks like a normal mansion into a supernatural nightmare.
Everything is represented with a card in The Horror at Highrook, from the investigators and their tools to abstract concepts like dreams. The game is played on what looks like a digital recreation of a board game showing a cross-section of the mansion’s rooms. To do anything, you need to place one of the game’s four investigators and another item in another room, then activate them to start a timer. At first, that might mean putting the plague doctor on the clifftop outside the house with a pair of binoculars or the scholar in the library with an index. When the timer on their action runs out, you’ll usually discover a new card, which might be plants used to craft potions or tools that help you in future actions. Only a character with the right skill can perform an action, and collecting these tools lets you accomplish tougher objectives.
Since it’s played entirely by pushing cards around a board and waiting for actions to resolve, The Horror at Highrook moves at a leisurely pace. Progressing through the game requires uncovering particular objects that reveal the past of the Ackeron family, like journal entries and artifacts from the father’s arcane studies.
While it can be frustratingly slow when you need a specific item and can’t seem to find it, that slow pace can also be a benefit. The routine of digging up the mansion’s grounds, performing experiments in the laboratory, and cooking meals for the investigators can sometimes turn into a nearly automatic loop, which makes it all the more shocking when normalcy is shattered by the otherworldly. Early on, you’ll begin collecting fragments of a ritual, and when they’re all assembled, reality is shattered, leading the investigators down increasingly surreal paths toward the mysterious cult that ensnared the Ackerons.
The longer they stay in the mansion, the more the investigators are affected by it as well. They’ll get tired and need to sleep, get hungry and need to eat, but as ghosts and fractures in reality begin to seep into the mansion, they’ll also lose their grip on reality. Each of these afflictions is tracked down to the percentage point on each character’s sheet, and letting them go too far can lead to them failing simple tasks or otherwise compromising the expedition. Keeping their needs met is never too difficult, but it does add a light strategy element to exploring the mansion.
There’s something innately satisfying about the tactile feel of pushing cards around the board in The Horror of Highrook, turning a few seconds’ effort into a tangible item, which then leads to a new discovery. One of the first moments where the game’s magic really clicked for me was when I realized that even sleeping can present you with dreams you can collect, and following up on the visions they grant can be an even more reliable key to untangling the game’s mystery than any more concrete finding.
Even more than that, it’s the way that story beats emerge from the same method that makes The Horror of Highrook shine. Watching the seconds count down as an investigator works, expecting to uncover some helpful device only to find an arcane ritual and a journal entry of the character seething at one of their companions makes every turn tense and laden with possibility. It may borrow from the established language of board games, but The Horror of Highrook feels wholly unique in how it spills its cryptic secrets revealing a tale of horror card by card.
