House Husband

By C. Henshaw

This game is mainly about a husband who has to clean up the house before his wife returns home. A fact, which is probably unsurprising, is that I find doing lots of household work boring, both in real life and on the computer. Unfortunately a lot of this game is just repetitive tasks, where you know what you have to do, and it just takes a lot of turns and effort to achieve it.

I hope I do not put off too many people with these comments, as this is a well written game, which does make the mundane more fun. There is also an interesting plot that you gradually discover and I do not want to spoil here. This review is far more negative than the game deserves, but at times as you play through, you just find yourself wanting to get on with the story, rather than repetitive tasks

The biggest problem with this game is the fact that you have to clean up absolutely everything before reaching the game's successful end. I solved about 90% of the tasks, before giving up and going to the walkthrough, as I was completely stuck. I gradually checked off and completed the tasks that I hadn't done, but it took me a long while to figure out the last missing task was where I had forgotten to look at an object in the first room. I think it would be very difficult to figure out everything without the walkthrough. This made the game very frustrating, especially as I had already figured out the plot from unsuccessful endings. It would possibly have been better to only need to complete most of the tasks rather than all of them, or allow a shortcut to the finish.

One error I noticed was that looking in the shed interior gives the same message as when you enter the shed, which is no longer appropriate.

Overall I did enjoy this game, but I think it could have been improved by not being quite so fastidious. That is how I like my housework.

SCORE - 6/10

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