ESCAPE FROM HORYD HOUSE

Here's my biggest and most complex game to date. It took over a month to make.

It has 9 separate games within it as you go from room to room in an effort to escape from the eerie Horyd House. It has all the game techniques that I was aware of at the time although I've learned a few more since.

Apart from one or two Bing images, everything was made or adapted on PowerPint (including the car with its animation at the end)

Get it to download here: ESCAPE FROM HORYD HOUSE

Thank you for sharing this game!

Now THIS is what I call a PowerPoint game! I am still in awe of all your work with all the details put into this game, and how you were able to make all the graphics (except 2) with just PowerPoint!

If you're just browsing around and looking to play a great PowerPoint game, don't skip on this one!

After completing ESCAPE FROM HORYD HOUSE, I too agree that this game was very well thought out and designed from a PowerPoint perspective. Incredible use of animations and triggers in order to work through the various puzzles in the house.

Here are my thoughts on each of the sections. (Spoiler warning for those who haven't played yet!)

• Title Slide: You are introduced to the scrolls, which will guide you the majority of the game. Entering the house starts the door animation, and a zombie appears on the right window. What attention to detail!
  
  
• Room with multiple doors: You are told to find the door that takes you to the next room. Opening each of the doors causes all sorts of animated effects from glows to giant creepy ghosts flying out.
  
  Clicking on the doors was entertaining, but I'm confused on how the first phase of this section was supposed to work. Is there actually a way to progress to the next room before the room gets completely dark?
  
  When the room does get dark, you're supposed to find the door by searching for chimes, which leads to arrows towards the door. I felt some frustration with this part since I was looping around with the arrow directions for a while. Then, when I found the area that led to the right door, I got even more confused since that door was, incidentally, the first door I clicked in the first phase.
  
  
• Typewriter room: This was a nice and satisfying "find the key" puzzle. While not particularly challenging, I found myself clicking on everything even after I found the key just to see all the animations play out.
  
  
• Bare room with flashlight: Another find an item puzzle, but this time, you're searching through hidden cubby holes. If you find the flashlight too quickly, you might find this section to be boring. But find yourself clicking just about every cubby hole, and you'll realize that some of the holes contain extra surprises. Luckily I fit into the latter.
  
  
• Kitchen: The flashlight you collected pans through this room. When it reaches the light switch, you can click that to light up the room and locate the parts for a blunderbuss.
  
  There's a LOT going on in this slide alone. The amount of objects you'll sift through are insane, and it seems that multiple development days were spent on this room alone. The item collecting here was for me more enjoyable here than the typewriter room. That said, I would've preferred it if I could click on the light switch before the flashlight reached it, if that's possible within PowerPoint triggers.
  
  
• Ghost room: Wow, a shooter in PowerPoint. Never seen this done before! The ghosts move fast, so it may take you several tries before getting to the next section.
  
  
• Hole in the floor: It's a mouse maze section, but I didn't realize it at first. Once I fell down the pit, I realized what was going on.
  
  While I like the idea that you have to get yourself back to the floor when you fall, it can get tedious to click all those steps just to get back up after several fails. Reducing the amount of steps here would have done wonders. The mouse maze itself is of moderate difficulty.
  
  Tip: If you wish to skip the entire mouse maze (which some may want to do if they're frustrated enough), move the cursor UP after reaching the top floor while the slide transition is happening.
  
  
• Fire room: Keep on clicking. Enough said.
  
  
• Horyd House front gates: Arguably my favorite section of the game. Nice challenge with the witches chasing you, and the surprise explosions keep the energy going.
  

Hi Tim, Many thanks for the comprehensive review. Horyd House was published a couple of years ago (I won't say 'finished' as there are still things that could be done with it). It took over a month to make with a few hours every day and as you identified, the kitchen took ages (4 -5 hours on the oven door alone and hours of messing around with bring-to-front / send-to-back...and there are still things landing behind other things that they should be in front of!).

I understand your frustration / confusion with some elements of it. I could change the words in the hall to say something like: 'Try all the doors first, then come back here' (because you can't get out first time round!). At the moment, the way that the flashlight moving around the kitchen works prevents the light switch being turned on - but I could fix that. I could also fix the hole-in-the-floor-multiple-climb-out frustration by allowing you to progress after the first climb-out rather than having to start again.

There are some techniques I know now that I didn't know then that could be used in some rooms - but that's PowerPoint!

Do you think there are elements of it that might warrent a tutorial that you or other forum members might be interested in? The flashlight / the ghost shooting / anything else?

I would suggest the tutorial on the flashlight scene. That could spark interesting new animations. I would've asked about the front gates part, but you already explained it with the rolling road tutorial.

Just made a video on making a moving flashlight and put in in the Tutorials Section.