Puppet House review for PS5, Xbox Series X, PC

It’s Halloween season, which means it’s the perfect time to check out some new indie horror titles like Puppet House, which is a 1st person puzzle-adventure game with a horror theme.  You play as Detective Rick who is tasked with investigating cases of missing people, which leads you to a house in the middle of nowhere — sounds like my type of game already.

Puppet House focuses on puzzle solving to progress through the story which works well here as this is a relatively short experience. As you explore the world, you will find notes littered throughout that help with solving the mystery and in turn learning something even more terrifying. As you can see on the cover art and name, we are dealing with a Puppet that has quite the personality.

Speaking about personality, let’s talk about the titular main character Detective Rick. The moment he spoke, I was dumbfounded because he sounded eerily familiar to a certain retro inspired character I love known as Kung Fury. If you know, you know, and when you hear it, you will not be able to unhear.

It’s appropriate for the style the developers focused on with B-movie horror releases and ’80s and ’90s horror games. As you explore the house, you will encounter the Puppet that loves to toy with you — no pun intended. At some points it feels as if they are helping you, and other moments, they’re out for blood.

An important note, this Puppet House has no combat per se as you are focused on exploration and puzzle solving. There are moments of quick time events sprinkled in which work for the moments they occur.  And as you get deeper into the story, the darker the game gets.  Overall, Puppet House was one I’m happy I didn’t miss out on, and even though the game is short, it’s worth experiencing with as little knowledge as you can. I would have loved for it to be a little longer but it’s still a satisfying experience.

Note: Gaming Factory provided us with a Puppet House PS5 code for review purposes.