The Last Door
- Platform:
- Release: Mar 2013
- Developer: The Game Kitchen
- Publisher: Phoenix Online, Plug In Digital, Tesura Games
- Composer: Carlos Viola
- Genres: point-and-click - horror - graphic-adventure
- Other platforms:
October 28, 2024
Videte Ne Quis Sciat
The first title by the award-winning Seville-based studio “The Game Kitchen”.
Even without being as popular as its later releases, “The Last Door” is a great adventure that presents us with a simple story, but one that gradually immerses us thanks to its atmosphere and TV series-style format, with seasons and episodes.
If you’re looking for a mysterious, dreamlike adventure with an atmosphere in the pure style of H.P. Lovecraft, that doesn’t require too much focus and can be played in spare moments, give this game a chance.
Before continuing, I’d like to highlight that the studio released the assets from the first season, a huge contribution for creators and a show of support for the indie industry.
Videte Ne Quis Sciat.
What I liked the most
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Inventory items disappear once used and no longer needed.
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The minimalist pixel art style, which, despite having limited pixels, manages to bring details and immersion to its scenes.
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The soundtrack is fantastic; Carlos Viola’s quality signature helps us immerse further in the story and sequence of events.
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The gameplay mechanics continue the minimalist style of the graphics: click to explore, another click to pick up items, simple inventory item combinations… avoiding the need to use verbs as in other classic adventures.
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The game offers different accessibility options such as a dyslexic-friendly font, text that only changes upon interaction, and sound and music subtitles.
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The episodic format suits the game very well, allowing us to solve puzzles in short segments, creating anticipation and saving us time compared to situations in genre classics, which would make us try an item found early on with everything throughout the entire adventure.
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There isn’t much “pick & delivery” issue, avoiding repetitive back-and-forth without anything interesting in between.
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Some details in the game seem to be early signs of what the studio was preparing for Blasphemous. Game Kitchen sure loves rosaries! 😛
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A well-crafted homage to Lovecraft’s work. Doctor Armitage!!
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The second season is my favorite:
- It includes map-based movement, much like “Monkey Island”.
- Fun, varied puzzles with a higher level of difficulty. I loved the mini-game where you guide by indicating cardinal points, like old-school text adventures.
- Longer duration and the story gets very interesting.
What didn’t win me over
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The double-click doesn’t speed up the character’s movement. Although we can quickly exit a previously visited scene (by clicking a door with the double arrow icon) and the game’s pace is relaxed, I would have liked the option to speed up character movement at any time.
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The first episode has some extremely easy puzzles.
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Clicking on the edge of a scene doesn’t advance to the next unless I click precisely on the exit icon.
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Not a big fan of the character’s sound effect when walking over wooden platforms.
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I would have liked it if, to observe interactive areas, the character had to approach rather than interact from a distance.
- Maybe not necessary in all cases, but this mechanic has made me miss some things right in front of me, like in the East Hill cell.
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Starting from episode 2 of the second season, I started experiencing something odd in the initial rendering of scenes:
- Upon entering a new room, the rendering is blurry for a few milliseconds before returning to normal.
Bugs
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Bug with “Baldwin” (First season - episode 2):
- Dialogue options for distracting the character and searching his toolbox didn’t appear.
- I wandered a lot until I realized the game was stuck and couldn’t proceed. It felt like when you ended up with two characters in the dungeon in “Maniac Mansion”.
- I had to restart the episode, as I couldn’t find a way to continue the story in that game.
- This might have happened because I played on the Switch and used the sleep mode at the wrong time, and the game reached a point of no return.
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Dark screen bug (First season - episode 4):
- When we reveal the photo and the scene starts, if I click one of the magnifying glasses, everything goes dark.
- You can hear the character moving, but I can’t exit the room.
- I have to exit the game and come back to continue playing.
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Masked statues bug (Second season - episode 2):
- From the top floor room, I can see the statue to the upper left with the mask in its hand, but the text says it’s wearing the mask.
- When I go down to look at the statue, as the text says, it has the mask on.
- At some point, continuing the story fixes this, and from the top floor, everything is seen correctly according to the text.
