The Horror at Highrook Review – Familiar Terrors, Fresh Mechanics

The Horror at Highrook review

Gather round, for The Horror of Highrook is a classic tale. When an important upper-class family goes missing in their desolated hilltop manor house, a team of investigators is dispatched to trace what — or who — happened to them. 

As our intrepid heroes settle into the creaking mansion, lighting flashes on the hillside, cultists creep in from the shadows, and terrors lurk in every shadow — even dreams. 

With a whole lot of lore right off the bat, we aren’t playing around. The Horror at Highrook brings the craft to Lovecraftian. The game is billed as a card-crafting narrative RPG; its camp feels simultaneously sincere and self-aware. 

It’s a strange world: Magic and science are indistinguishable in this forbidding Gothic setting. Its macabre aesthetic establishes an unsettling otherworldliness. It’s completely matched by its gleefully genre-typical cast. 

A steampunk artificer; an erudite scholar; a brawny trapper — and don’t forget the obligatory mysterious, plague mask-donning mad scientist! By embracing these tropes, it doesn’t matter that The Horror at Highrook isn’t treading new ground. The Horror at Highrook is comfort food for the Gothically inclined.

Cards and Cultists

The Horror at Highrook purposefully evokes a physical card game, the type we might play with some particularly zealous board game friends. (If you don’t recognize the type, check your shelf, because it’s probably you). 

Players are thrown right into gameplay, but The Horror at Highrook’s strong tutorial makes sense of a senseless world — or at least its mechanics. It wasn’t long before I was curled up on my sofa, telling myself just one more drag and drop.

Each character is represented by a card, which players move around a game board that resembles the creaking old mansion they’re exploring. Players match these characters’ skillsets with tasks to uncover more of the mystery. 

Important actions require players add booster cards, which range anywhere from mystery vials to a friendly feline companion.  

As Highrook deepens in strangeness, we unlock more of the mansion through dialogue scenes paired with gorgeous character art that propelled me to see what happened next.  

The game’s main action revolves around using your characters to uncover more clues. Sometimes, it’s as satisfying as it should be to switch between active and pause mode. But once I figured out the gameplay loop, the stakes never quite recovered their urgency. By then, even the flavor text couldn’t save the slog between narrative beats. 

It felt like developer Nullpointer Games knew something was off, because each chapter shook up the gameplay with new actions or types of tasks. But before long, the gameplay settled back into its usual pattern, repetition resumed.

Routine is the Spice of Life

Far be it from me to knock repetition, though. I love games that let me meaninglessly replay the same gameplay loop to no end — and here, there is one! When it kicked in, The Horror at Highrook has a great flow state. I was so sucked in that each nugget of story was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t just find the narrative compelling, but found myself chasing each character’s optional storyline to the end. 

While a few typos and grammar issues throughout hint that the game still needs a little polish, The Horror at Highrook is a great time for anyone who loves a little Lovecraft with their card games. 

If you don’t fit perfectly in that Venn diagram, you may wonder if Highrook could have had a few more mysteries in its storied halls. 

***PC code was provided by the publisher***