Riddlewood Manor
Our verdict
8/10
- Difficulty: Medium
- Players: 1
- Playtime: 3–4 h
Riddlewood Manor is a hand-drawn point-and-click escape game from Peanut Button, the studio behind The Secret of Retropolis. You explore a haunted gothic mansion through 360-degree first-person scenes, solving odd puzzles while a demonic doll called Suzie roams the halls. The tone is creepy comedy in the spirit of Rusty Lake and Scooby-Doo, and wrong moves can kill you, sending you back to the yard to try again. Jump scares can be flagged in advance.
Players like it a lot: 92 of 95 Steam reviews are positive. Reviewers find most puzzles interesting, and the cast of a dragon, a hungry chicken and ghostly family members gives it a silly charm. Written feedback is limited, but one reviewer calls it weird and occasionally repetitive.
The same reviewers point to moon logic now and then, tedious backtracking, and a death mechanic that clashes with the urge to click everything. Expect three to four hours. Buy it if you enjoy Rusty Lake-style absurdity with a horror wink; skip it if instant deaths for curiosity sound annoying.
Pros
- Haunted manor mixes horror with goofy, cartoon-like humour
- Odd characters like a dragon and a chicken drive puzzles
- Optional warnings take the edge off jump scares
Cons
- Death mechanic punishes the habit of clicking everything
- Occasional moon logic and tedious backtracking
About
Welcome! We hope you enjoy your stay at Riddlewood Manor, provided the estate doesn’t kill you first. Survive a deadly series of eerie escape rooms in this lovely resort where fear meets farce. Disturb the spirits within to unearth the absurd lore behind the Riddlewood family, and — oh, just a small precaution, please refrain from summoning any demonic entities if you see a doll around. That’s Suzie. She cannot be trusted.
The Riddlewood Family may not be around as, uh…physically as they once were, but Emily’s demonic doll Suzie still strolls the manor’s halls looking for a playmate. Find the courage to leave no stone unturned in 360° rendered environments from a fully-controllable first-person perspective, solve silly puzzles, and escape from Suzie’s sight before she decides what game she wants to play with you.
Riddlewood Manor may be trying to kill you, but not everything residing within is – at least, they don’t mean to. Encounter living creatures still lingering around the ghostly gothic mansion: comfort an eccentric dragon, feed a derpy chicken, cook breakfast for patriarchal spirits, and deduce other solutions to the house’s dark, menacing puzzles. Find solutions to survive a murderous building and uncover the tragic truth behind the Riddlewoods’ fate.
Look. Not all of us are born with the frontal lobe of an infallible scientist. Mistakes are natural. In Riddlewood Manor, they’re also unfortunately fatal. This can be a good thing! Test out strange solutions for the chance to discover secrets buried throughout the estate. Sure, maybe you’ll get gobbled up by a carnivorous plant or drown in an underground sea of heinous goo, but hey! Thanks to a kind summoning circle of monks in the yard, at least you’ll respawn outside the manor more knowledgeable than ever.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Riddlewood Manor is full of ‘em. Love ‘em? Have fun! Find them too stressful? Remove the surprise by turning on optional warnings ahead of the scare and enjoy the spooky spectacle stress-free.
A hand-drawn, puzzle-driven, creepy comedy adventure supported by voice acting
Survive the many deadly rooms of Riddlewood Manor filled with suspenseful brain teasers – or just simply die instead, that works, too
Inspect a gauntlet of atmospheric escape room mysteries in first-person with full 360° camera control
Cooperate with offbeat characters like a playful dragon, a hungry chicken, and a demonic doll
Solve mysterious mindbogglers to reveal secret endings and expose the truth behind the Riddlewood’s disappearance
(Optional) Jump scares galore. BOO!
Peanut Button is an independent game studio founded by brothers Asaf Geva and Eyal Geva. The studio is known for The Secret of Retropolis, the critically acclaimed VR game and series. Their current project, Riddlewood Manor, is inspired by the surreal puzzles of the Rusty Lake series and the spooky charm of classic cartoons like Scooby-Doo, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and The Addams Family.
