It’s not often that a game comes around and it feels genuinely new, like nothing you’ve ever played before. The Horror at Highrook brims with that feeling of novelty, with its horror story playing out in fascinatingly fresh ways. While it leans heavily into narrative tropes, its card-based storytelling system creates new surprises at every turn, paving the way for a wonderfully original game that’s just plain cool.
The crux is this: you control a team of investigators obligated to uncover the truth behind the strange disappearance of the rich Ackeron family, who called the Highrook Estate home. Each investigator is placed on a playing board representing a home – in similar fashion to GamesHub board game favourite, Mansions of Madness – and as they explore, new clues, in the form of playing cards, pop up. The more you investigate by interacting with these clues, the more clues will appear.
With each investigator having a specialty in areas of detective work, you must focus on wielding them wisely, deploying them in key rooms to investigate set items, or produce a range of helpful goods. All the while, you’ll also have to watch each detective’s health status, and ensure you’re keeping them fed, well-slept, damage-free, and sane. Highrook Estate is a great and terrible place, filled with all manner of horrors, and it’s up to you to fend them off, playing your cards (figuratively and literally) right.
Down the rabbit hole
I can’t say I’ve ever played a game where the action is specifically determined by card plays, unless we’re talking about an experience in the tabletop space. The Horror at Highrook feels like a perfect marriage of the video game and board game realm, with the collation allowing for a uniqueness in its many investigations.
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Of course, it’s not just a matter of laying cards down to see what you get in return. There’s also ample strategy baked in, with powerful enemies appearing as you venture deeper into the game’s plot, and these requiring characters to be levelled, or have certain aid items in place – some which can only be earned by investigating clues in rooms, or combining clues together.
You find yourself in a tight loop quickly – identifying rooms where boons can be generated (meals, health potions, skill aids), and others where a deeper investigation may allow you to form special objects to free the Ackeron family from their fate. Each investigator also has their own mystery bubbling away beneath the surface, so diving into their stories will uncover new threads in need of pulling.
Days move quickly in The Horror at Highrook, with a real sense of panic backing each day-night cycle. News arrives on your doorstep, revealing new horrors that approach, and as your quest grows long, you begin to understand the impact of time passing. But with the game’s strategic pause mechanic, you can make time to breath, and to work out all the little intricacies to guide your next steps.
Highrook gives you time to figure out the most essential actions. Is anyone in your team in need of rest? Are they hungry? Are ghosts or ghouls wandering the corridors? What will defeating a ghost yield? Sometimes, you’ll find objects that hide multiple secrets – so you’ll need to make your own time to analyse items over and over, figuring out what they truly reveal.
Studying a book at length will reveal arcane passages. Venturing further into a dark passage might uncover unique goods hiding in boxes. Of course, sometimes your investigation will be a bust – but your investigators will prod you in the next best direction, at least. Even if there’s ghosts and ghouls lurking there.
Find the correct path forward, or unlock the next ghostly seal holding back the horrors of Highrook Estate, and you’ll get new, haunting prose to lead you onwards. You may encounter a ghost or a spirit, or some other eldritch force, adding layers to your quest, and to the impetus of gathering every clue, leading into wonderfully dynamic card-based battle.
The true horror at Highrook
The Horror at Highrook is impactful for the minimalism in its gameplay, and when the action ascends to maximalism. For the most part, you’re quietly, carefully exploring a manor by experimenting with card combinations and placements. Then, with a sharp hiss, the game unleashes a new horde of horrors, leading into a more frantically-paced segment of card battles where you must correctly pair investigators with aid cards and rooms to ensure peace settles once more. All that without exposing your investigators to the full horrors they’re witnessing, and ensuring they remain useful parts of your team.
Pacing is managed expertly here, with the card combat being well-designed, and surprisingly engaging for taking place on a static board. Clever design choices and use of time passing adds to the drama, encouraging a swift solution of frantic card placements, before the next horror is able to strike.
In the balance of these elements – the peace and novelty of investigation, and the immediate dread of enemy attacks – The Horror at Highrook is a wonderfully sharp horror game. It’s not outright scary, but its supernatural tone, and the well-crafted shifts in gameplay style make for a spooky, scary experience that keeps you locked into the action. Its simplicity, on the surface, is a smokescreen for deep mechanics that well-serve an enthralling story of dreadful consequences.
The Horror at Highrook will stay with you for long after the credits roll.
Four-and-a-half stars: ★★★★½
The Horror at Highrook
Platform(s): PC
Developer: Nullpointer Games
Publisher: Nullpointer Games, Outersloth
Release Date: 2 May 2025
A PC code for The Horror at Highrook was provided by the publisher and played on a Steam Deck for the purposes of this review. GamesHub reviews are rated on a ten-point scale.
