Review: A House in California by Cardboard Computer

A House in California, the latest game from developer Jake Elliott and his studio, Cardboard Computer, sends players on an introspective and nostalgic interactive adventure about four characters turning a house into a home.

As stated on Cardboard Computer’s website, the game’s four protagonists (Lois, Beulah, Connie, and Ann) — each with her own playable “chapter” — are based on two of Elliott’s grandmothers, and two of his great-grandmothers. “The game is inspired aesthetically by Mystery House, developed in 1980 by Roberta & Ken Williams,” writes Elliott. “But whereas Mystery House is a mystery story about greed and murder, A House in California is more like an Imagist poem about family and memory.”

If you haven’t already guessed, Jake Elliott doesn’t make typical games. His previous works include free-to-play titles such as “I Can Hold My Breath Forever,” “Beulah and the Hundred Birds,” and the recently released text-adventure about attention deficit disorder called “Hummingbird Mind.”

A House in California is a surreal trip through childhood memories that have been filtered through the opaque lenses of time and nostalgia. The minimalist art style works extraordinarily well in creating scenes that serve as “puzzle rooms,” with nothing else but descriptive text and player imagination to help flesh out the narrative. Though many of the puzzle solutions are quite abstract, none feel far-reaching or out of place, provided you have a fully-functioning imagination.

Players are provided with a short list of verbs, which live at the bottom of each scene. In point-and-click fashion, each verb can be selected and combined with things in each scene. What makes things interesting is the atypical nature of the actions Elliot provides. Sure, verbs like “Look” are self-explanatory, but others like “Learn,” “Remember,” “Forget,” “Read,” “Write,” and “Befriend,” beg the player to experiment. As in Elliott’s previous games, exploration is its own reward. Nearly all of the possible verb-object combinations in the game will yield results, and even “dead-end clicks” will provide the player with a snippet of relevant text. Some of these blurbs are informative, some are funny, and some are downright poetic, but in each case they all add a lot to the game’s poetic charm.

Point-and-click adventure game enthusiasts should be immediately at home with the control scheme. The game’s individual puzzles aren’t very difficult in-and-of themselves, but they do challenge players to think in creative ways. “Remembering” an object, for example, might be the way that you progress to the next “layer” or “scene” of a particular character’s memory.

My only real complaint about the puzzles is that there’s a linearity to progression that sometimes seems to be at odds with the free-flowing theme of exploring nostalgic memory. Certain actions won’t be available until you complete others, and in very rare instances, it felt more like I was trying to figure out how to jump through the next hoop of progress than simply being able to find my way through more organic exploration. On the flip side, the occasional “click ’till you succeed” puzzle will ensure that you don’t miss much of the great descriptive text that accompanies each action.

Playing through A House in California from start to finish should take forty-five minutes or less to complete, depending on your surreal-puzzle-solving skills. It’s worth noting that the game doesn’t include any saves or checkpoints. Jake told us that he “decided against the ’save/continue’ feature since I really don’t feel that the game works when the individual parts are played separately.” Having completed the game, I wholeheartedly agree with his decision. Though the game is broken into four separate “stories,” they’re all interconnected, and meant to be played consecutively.

In short, A House in California is an incredibly interesting gameplay experience for intellectual gamers that’s likely to get you reminiscing about your own childhood memories. Its poetic puzzles are creative, often requiring out-of-the-box thinking that goes beyond that required by traditional adventure game conventions. It also got me thinking about how we all tend to view past memories through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, with the details we perceive as important taking center stage over all else. A House in California is different, refreshing, artistic, and is a playful representation of exploring fond remembrances. I highly recommend playing, as it’s one of those games that’ll stick with you once it’s over.

A House in California is free to download and play from the Cardboard Computer website for PC, Mac, and Linux. In addition to being featured at the Meaningful Play conference at Michigan State University last month, the game is currently on display at the Euphrat Museum of Art’s Learn to Play exhibition, and has been accepted as a submission to the 2011 Independent Gaming Festival.

Be sure to check out parts one and two of our interview with Jake Elliott, pre-Cardboard Computer.

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