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Games where you explore a mansion ...

E

encephalon

Member
... That aren't Resident Evil? Perhaps not even horror games?

Playing REmake now, which is glorious, I find myself wishing I had been experiencing it for the first time. There are a number of games with this kind of setting.

Here's a list of games I can think of

Typical Mansion
The Barrow's House in Clock Tower SFC/PS1
And the castle in the PS1 Sequel Clock Tower 2 (Just "Clock Tower" in NA) PS1
The Seven Mansions of Nanatsu no Hikan SS/PS1
Luigi's Manson and its respective sequel GC/3DS

Japanese Flavor
Himuro Mansion in Fatal Frame/Project Zero PS2
The dream mansion in Fatal Frame/Project Zero III PS2

It's Like a Mansion!
Belli Castle in Haunting Ground PS2

Not Sure/Haven't played
The mansion in The Demon of Laplace/Laplace no Ma ... This is an RPG. SFC/PC Engine/etc
The mansion in 7th Guest PC
Alone in the Dark ... and sequels? I've briefly played the original and it's ... rough. PC/etc?

I'm probably forgetting a bunch and there are also probably old games (hopefully on GOG.com) that I'm just not aware of. Do you know of any? I love seeing a locked door and going back to find out what's behind it. And also the sense of mystery it creates before I'm able to open it. Finding my way deeper and deeper into a mansion, etc. Outside of maybe, say, Dark Souls*, I can't think of any modern games devoted to evoking this sort of feeling.

For the sake of contributing content and making this thread more interesting than posting lists, I'd like to post excerpts from an older article from Chris' Survival Horror Quest that details the "recursive" style that RE1 maintains. It's actually quite cleverly designed.
Chris' Survival Horror Quest said:
2qUfkR7.png
Click to expand...

This approach has interested me for a long time. The genius part of the Resident Evil level design is that in the course of playing through the game two things happen: the player unlocks shortcuts and the player runs out of ammo. At some point the game becomes entirely about traversing efficiently through the mansion; it's a run from the safe room (where we can save) through the shortest possible set of rooms until we reach another safe room or a new puzzle to solve. There's simply not enough ammo to dispatch all of the zombies in the game, so route planning and deftly maneuvering through the Victorian building is eventually the key source of challenge.
Click to expand...

There are 116 unique rooms in Resident Evil, split between four major areas: the mansion, the courtyard, the guardhouse, and the laboratory. A room is any space the player can occupy: a hallway, passage, closet, or room. To finish the game, UltimateSpeedRuns visited 213 rooms total, which means that most rooms were visited only twice. Does it strike you as odd that a game known for requiring a lot of backtracking can be completed without passing through most rooms more than two times? Remember, this includes all hallways and passages, as well as proper rooms, in the game.
Click to expand...

In fact, the data shows that we can be far more efficient than that. Of the 116 rooms in the game, 19 of them were not visited at all in this run. These are rooms that contain story pieces, or access to guns or other items that are not strictly necessary for progression. The majority (44, 38%) of rooms were only visited once. The most visited room in the entire game is a small hallway in the upper-right part of the mansion's first floor. This room connects the mansion to the courtyard, to the second floor, and it is also right in the middle of several shortcut paths. It was visited a total of eight times.

This means that while there is some backtracking involved in Resident Evil, the path is from beginning to end is mostly linear. In fact, ... we can see that there is a common pattern to the traversal: the player enters an area and then spends a lot of time in that immediate vicinity, visiting adjacent rooms several times before moving forward or heading back the way they came. You can see how an area will light up with activity for a few seconds, then the player travels on to some other part of the mansion. There's a little bit of micro-backtracking within these "hot" areas, but very little retracing of steps across the larger map. At a macro level, Resident Evil is pretty much a linear string of these hot spots.
Click to expand...

It's a testament to the design of the original game that it was so tightly and carefully designed. It's really a shame that we lost the Resident Evil that was with Resident Evil 4, even if 4 was quite a great game. Please click the link above for the full article.

*Which I haven't played yet.
 
lt519 said:
If you are counting castles does Super Mario 64 count? One of my favorite world hubs.
Click to expand...

I don't think it really counts because not much is actually done in the castle aside from traveling from world to world. It creates a fun sense of progression, however.
 
That creepy Atlus game. Rule of Rose

Also Kuon, that samurai ghost mansion/castle thing.

Outlast takes place in an Insane Asylum, does that count.
 
Ricky_R said:
Not sure if 7th Guest fits. Can't remember much.

EDIT: Googled it and I think it does.

T7G-Box-Cover.jpg
Click to expand...

Haha I was about to say, 'the hell it doesn't!'

Mansion exploration is a pretty common theme in horror and adventure games. The first clock tower takes place entirely in a mansion. Most of Phantasmagoria also takes place in a big spooky mansion. The list is pretty long.
 
I've always loved games (and movies) where you explore a haunted mansion full of puzzles and riddles. The best recent experience was the DLC for Resident Evil 5. If RE7 was built on the model of that DLC I would be in heaven having a full game like that.

Haunting Ground was great. But it's crazy to think how long ago that was. The original Devil May Cry kinda had the flavor too but it was more a castle.

I can only hope indies pick up and carry the torch the AAA's have abandoned.
 
Lurking said:
My bad. Edited it in, I actually confused the two.
Click to expand...

It's fine. Rule of Rose is actually made by ... Punchline, I think, and was published by Sony in Japan.

Thanks for bringing up Ku-On, though, this is a game I have yet to play.

To answer your question, I really meant for the thread to focus on any substantial portion of a game spent exploring a mansion or mansion-like area, preferably in a non-linear manner.
 
old said:
I've always loved games (and movies) where you explore a haunted mansion full of puzzles and riddles. The best recent experience was the DLC for Resident Evil 5. If RE7 was built on the model of that DLC I would be in heaven having a full game like that.

I can only hope indies pick up and carry the torch the AAA's have abandoned.
Click to expand...

The Jill portions of Revelations were so shallow in this regard and the episodic nature and repetition ruined any chance for the Queen Zenobia to be an interesting location. Was the RE5 DLC better? I've never played RE5, nor do I own it. As much as I want classic RE back, I'm not sure it's worth playing through RE5.

I agree. I really hope Indie game development can reach for something like a PS1 style RE/etc game. Although I guess we're getting the enhanced RE1.5 (unless this has been C&D'd and I don't know about it).

Wereroku said:
Mansion of hidden souls is Sega CD. The mansion of hidden souls is Saturn. They are actually two different games with the Saturn one being somewhat related.
Click to expand...

I had no idea, thank you.
 
Gone Home is a good answer.

You can also try Alone In The Dark, if the graphics don't repulse you.

encephalon said:
I'm kicking myself for selling this game before completing it. : (
Click to expand...

It gets tedious towards the end, imo. You can always watch the end on YouTube, but I thought it was underwhelming. A great premise, some killer "hallucination" effects, but there's too much emphasis on fighting in the last part of the game.
 
Grizzo said:
Gone Home is a good answer.

You can also try Alone In The Dark, if the graphics don't repulse you.



It gets tedious towards the end, imo. You can always watch the end on YouTube, but I thought it was underwhelming. A great premise, some killer "hallucination" effects, but there's too much emphasis on fighting in the last part of the game.
Click to expand...

I tried Alone in the Dark but found it difficult to play and then I fell in a hole in the middle of the floor. I might attempt to go back to it ... someday.
 
Shaanyboi said:
What about Gone Home? Is that house big enough to qualify as a mansion?
Click to expand...

Yes but the thread title specifically said games where you explore a mansion #rekt.

In all seriousness though, if we're extending the topic to castles, Devil May Cry would count, methinks.
 
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