Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more!” - Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

I vaguely remember encountering a prologue to a title named The Last Door in Kongregate a couple years ago, but I dropped participating Kongregate community sometime thereon, so it was a complete surprise encountering the full game here in Steam later. A quick research informed me about the Kickstarter journey of The Game Kitchen and how wonderful a job they managed to put on the table with limited participation on backers and pixel art graphics only. Recently completing the first season, here will be my part actual review and part fangirl rant for Victorian Gothic - especially for the concept of horror itself.

It's 1891, England. Jeremiah Devitt receives an unsettling letter from his old friend, Anthony Beechworth, with whom he attended a boarding school in Aberdeen years ago. The letter contains one sentence only that would be vaguely familiar to Devitt: "Videte ne quis sciat", the long forgotten motto of the philosophy club they formed as young boys back in the boarding school. Knowing his old friend would only use this sentence as a distress call, Devitt leaves his apartment and catches the first train to Sussex to visit Beechworth residence. From thereon, his journey towards the unknown, the unspeakable and the unforeseeable will begin. In his journey for discovering the truth, Devitt will slowly yet surely pass the veil that separates the wisdom from the insanity, reaching for the knowledge of "Malum in se" or rather: evil within itself.

As one can get a grasp of the narration so far, The Last Door is a fine product of horror literature, inspired heavily from the works of Poe, Lovecraft, Maupassant, Borges, Machen and many others; playing on the horror of the unknown, the unexplainable or more so: the uncanny. Today, literary academics make clear differentiations between the notions of fear, terror and the horror. Fear is an instantaneous reaction or at least a basic worry, while the terror is being continuously under some kind of threat. With terror, you can fundamentally foresee and understand the threat that would befall on you, yet fail to resolve it or prevent it with a conclusion. With horror, on the other hand, you are rendered incapable of even grasping the meaning, the reason or the nature of the threat altogether, rendering your cognitive ability useless… and that specific kind of threat is the most fundamental, basic and dreadful experience anyone can go under. So dreadful, the narrative medium of language fails to describe its nature exactly, presenting only vague descriptions of associations. Being a masterfully arranged horror adventure, The Last Door is one of such experiences.

Establishing a horror adventure with pixel art graphics might seem like a repelling choice for most people, but I find part game's success in this specific display choice. With pixel art graphics, we are not always capable of understanding direct depictions of objects, nuances or happenstances. We are left with symbolic environment designs that are presented to arrange a vague image, a symbol for the actual. It is both familiar yet quite so alien at the same time. Freud's 1835 Article, Das Unheimliche or The Uncanny describes this specific notion as a cognitive dissonance; for being attracted and repulsed by a concept at the same time. This paradoxical nature deems a state or a being uncanny - and quite possibly dangerous. This fundamental concept perpetuated the fear of the unknown and established the foundation of all horror literature that will follow involuntarily. The art display in the game is an excellent example of Freud's Uncanny. Everything is somewhat familiar yet boundlessly alien at the same time. This psychodynamic arranges a triumphant baseline for the atmosphere. The same notion is supported by brilliantly picked sound effects and orchestrated soundtrack – ordinary and beautiful, yet unexplainable and unsettling at the same time - to exalt the setting.

Aside its psychological undertone, The Last Door is an episodic point & click adventure. Each chapter follows the one before to portray the first season of Jeremiah Devitt's unsettling journey. You are to roam within a limited environment in each chapter; collecting notes, items; interacting with people and solving puzzles to make the story progress. Even with the chosen style of graphics, it’s not that hard to notice and interact with objects. Puzzles take brief contemplation at first, but when figured, they are spot on and elegant. Anecdotes and nuances collected from the most memorable Gothic literary pieces are masterfully nestled into the game for your discovery. The primary motifs of the game - crows, or rather ravens - are a direct reference to Poe alongside countless others.

If you are interested in the collective experience that would portray the totality of The Last Door, you are in for a literary feast with imageries worthy of nightmarish depictions scribbled into your subconscious. It is a remarkable example of sheer success for both narrative and atmosphere without much graphic display. Recommended to be played with headphones and in total darkness!

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I have absolutely enjoyed my time with The Last Door. At first I thought the Atari 2600 style (give or take) graphics would lessen the effect of the cosmic horror style storytelling, but I was wrong. It actually made things even creepier. The story is pretty top notch (Chapter Three is possibly the weakest in the set) and it reminded me of all the classic point and click horror adventure games I played in my younger years. Now, there aren't a lot of puzzles in the series save for the usual inventory based ones, but what the game lacks in testing your wits, it more than makes up with mood, style and atmosphere. I'm eagerly awaiting Season Two and if you're a fan of authors like Lovecraft, Bierce, Bloch, Chambers and the like, you'll absolutely fall in love with this game.

The Last Door is a Lovecraftian simple point and click adventure with extremely marvellous atmosphere and a captivating intriguing story.

The graphics are minimal even for indie standards, yet the writing completely makes up for that. There's a lot of secrets and eastereggs to find and the episodes are all around 1-2 hours long and can be segmented leisurely.

All in all, a brilliant Adventure.

Nice Point & Click Adventure with Story, strange pixel graphics but still very detailed & many work to do.

Good for Point & Click Fans & Achievement Hunters (buy with 50 % discount)

A mark of a great story is how it sticks with you long after the tale is told. The best stories I’ve experienced are the ones that keep me up at night, ruminating on every twist and turn and imagining what could have been hiding in the shadows that saw no light. I finished The Last Door years ago, and I still remember the evenings spent mulling over the many threads it wove together. More than that, I still think back on it now whenever cosmic horror or eldritch evils are brought to mind, because more than any other game it captures the essence of those themes.

Young Jeremiah Devitt has been summoned to the home of an old classmate by a mysterious letter. He soon finds the estate in shocking disarray, and his investigation into the cause will take him on a nightmarish journey through a particularly bleak portrayal of Victorian England. The trail runs through sick wards, foggy streets, dank cellars, fresh graves, and places even further beyond the horizon of sanity. Despite the warnings along the way, his path speeds towards a terrible secret with absolute inevitability, overseen by a dark presence from which there is no escape.

Sounds positively Lovecraftian, doesn’t it? The Last Door has cooked up its own cosmology of unknowable horrors to haunt Jeremiah every step of the way, forces that do not jump out of closets or give chase down hallways but frighten by the very implication of their existence. From the very first episode it is clear that something is wrong in this world, and if anything your actions only hasten whatever reckoning there can be with it. This game truly understands cosmic horror in ways most media cannot, and the combination of impending doom and tantalizing secrets perfectly captures the essence of the tragic Lovecraft protagonist.

The gameplay is just as smartly designed as the atmosphere and narrative, thankfully. As a point-and-click adventure it’s clean and straightforward, with the basic systems of movement, examining, collecting, and combining items in place to progress. Puzzles are clever and follow common logic well enough that I never needed a walkthrough (as I often do in point-and-clicks, I must admit). The only part that might throw you off are the incredibly chunky pixel graphics, because while items are plenty conspicuous by their shapes or color choices it is rarely obvious what they actually are until you interact with them. Honestly I can see the retro aesthetic giving plenty of people pause, but I submit that it never causes serious problems finding your way. It also leaves a lot of the horror to the imagination, as your brain fills in the gaps left by the indistinct shapes.

There are plenty of spooks in this game, and ones that don’t rely on jumpscares or cheap shots. For an adventure game The Last Door is extremely effective at keeping the player on edge, using a sharp combination of narrative implications, ominous lighting, and fantastic sound design. Some scenes allow the soundtrack to drop out entirely, leaving you with just the crunching of your shoes on the dirt to anticipate what could happen next. And often nothing does, but the game will surprise you just often enough that you’ll never feel safe. Fortunately the fine puzzles and immersive sounds make it such a pleasure to play through, the constant tension feels absolutely worth it.

The four episodes will take you around 30 to 40 minutes each to complete, and though they vary quite a bit and can veer off in odd directions they form a very compelling whole. Your discoveries only reveal more of the otherworldly threat lurking in the dark corners of England, and Jeremiah will pay for his involvement. My only other warning about the game is that the end is not a clear conclusion to the story and leads into Season 2 where the grand finale is found. But really this is more of a recommendation to pick up both and experience the whole saga, because The Last Door is some of the finest cosmic horror I have ever enjoyed. The developers are masters of their art and have crafted a world of secrets and tragedies and doom, and wrapped it in a package that is impossible to look away from.



Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my curation page!

Pixels can jumpscare you through the roof!!!

There are plenty of modern games with pixel graphics, but not like this! In my mind it's sort of an homage to the CGA/EGA graphics of old, almost... The lightsources are with a more modern technique. With any 'lacking' graphics form the mind will compensate to make it more pretty, and it's very personal if you like it or not. I myself liked it, but only once in a very big while!

Four students called upon a 'something' (not spoiling), and much later one of them is drawn to suicide related to the occurrence during their studenthood. As one of the other students you receive a letter from the one suiciding, and you'll set on a journey through present and past to discover how and why.
The story is relatively simple, and ofcourse you won't uncover all the answers, leaving some mystery present. It's more about the atmosphere in this game. There is always a sense of mystery. The story is split in four episodes, and every episode has one or two big jumpscares. The pixels are accompanied by a very loud piano. I played with rather excessive volume, and it got me every time! Be spooked!

Lastly I can say that this game received truly a lot of attention from the devs. It even has a couple of 'minisodes' to provide some additional information, flair and substance. The achievements are challenging but fair. Naturally I had to go through the game about five times, but that's me.

72/100

'The Last Door' is a classic point and click adventure game. So much so that you can play the entire thing with only the use of the mouse. The graphics are beautifully designed pixel graphics that never feel like you are losing atmosphere. The story is intriguing and interesting with a feeling of The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe and has been called “A Love letter to H.P. Lovecraft” by Penny Arcade.

The music composed by Carlos Viola is phenomenal. In fact I would say that it is now in my top 3 most loved video game soundtracks after playing this game and worth the purchase price by itself. You can download the soundtrack from the website (https://thelastdoor.com/index.php/soundtrack), although they have plans to include it in an update at some point in the Collector's Edition on Steam. Here's a bit of a taste from the Chapter 1 OST, which should give you some feeling as to the atmosphere of the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPkdM6T4uE0

This is a story of a young man named Jeremiah Devitt, who receives a letter from an old school friend he has not seen in many years with a cryptic message that makes Devitt know something is wrong. Dealing with his own psychological issues in which he tries to remember his past he traverses back to places from his younger days in Victorian England to try and remember what they had all gotten themselves into all those years ago. Once arriving at his friend's home he finds that his journey is just beginning and we are taken through a strange occultist tale.

Gameplay is simple point and click adventure fare with no real annoyances from my experience. Everything works as it should and feels natural. The game contains many puzzles that you must work out to move on as all the classic adventure titles do. Most are fairly simple with just trying items out in different ways until you find a match, but you will be required to read the many notes you find in the game to get some tips on what some of the puzzles entail. Found letters will give you clues on how to pass certain areas based on their eerie nature.

Achievements are included and lead you some in places you may get stuck, but there are even more secrets beneath the surface that you may never discoever without a bit of help. One achievement entitled Master of the Occult tasks you with finding every secret in the game, and these are not at all easily identified. Odds are you will need to use the Guide in the community hub to find these, but they add a lot of flavor to the game that makes for some strange and sometimes creepy easter eggs.

The Collector's Edition that is available on Steam is a more polished and put together package than the free to play version that is on the website (https://thelastdoor.com/). There you must download each episode one by one, and it doesn’t include the 4 mini-sodes that the CE does, nor does it have them combined as one game like the CE does. Also, most obviously, the free version doesn't include Steam Achievements, or trading cards. Even though you can play the entire season of the game for free on the website, this game deserves compensation. It is far better than the vast majority of adventure games currently on Steam in almost every respect. Story, art, and music. So please consider either purchasing it on Steam, or making a donation on the website itself if you enjoy it. :)

This is considered to be Season 1 of 'The Last Door', which includes 4 Chapters/Episodes as well as 4 mini-sodes for a look at certain other people and situations that were not shown in the main game with our main character. The Season 2 episodes have just started to come out with Episode 1 being released about 6 weeks ago on the Last Door website. Episode 2 is expected to be released in early 2015. Currently, Episode 1 can only be played if you make a donation of at least $1, but when Episode 2 is released in early 2015 Episode 1 will be available for free download while Episode 2 will then be the one that needs a donation to be played immediately until Episode 3 comes out. They have not announced any plans to release a Season 2 Collector's Edition on Steam after it is complete, but I would wager that it will be done.

A well made point and click adventure that deserves to be compensated for the quality it provides. It is well worth the purchase price for adventure fans, and the original OST is worthy of being mentioned among the best in all fo video games. Highly recommend this game to fans of the genre.

8/10 Worth it at full price, but must buy when on sale.

Ever since I was a child I had an interest in horror- or occult-stories, books and movies. I think most of you would agree if I say that’s typical for a young human being that widens its horizon every day but can’t figure out why darkness is so much more uncomfortable yet exciting than daylight. Even now as a grown up I love Lovecraft and Poe, but also modern representatives of this genre, for example Hohlbein, and it still catches me when there is something you try to imagine but you can’t figure out what it looks like. As the famous H.P.Lovecraft said:

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

So, enough of an introduction, let’s have a look at the game you came to read about here.

The Last Door is a Point-and-Click Adventure that is set in the 1890s in Victorian England, a time when science was already established but ancient beliefs and a secret organisations such as the freemasons were well known among the people. You get in touch with Jeremiah Devitt, a man in the mid-thirties who received a strange letter from his childhood friend Alexander Beechworth. Not knowing how to deal with this, Jeremiah decides to visit Alexander, unraveling the mysteries about his whereabouts and his family. But that may be only the start for a journey that will lead you to places of Jeremiah’s childhood and past that have been forgotten for some reason. It seems like an ancient evil is making its way back into your life..

I can’t write any further without spoiling but you should already feel how this story will suck you in, not releasing you until finished. A man gets snatched from his everyday life right into a victorian nightmare, how much more lovecraftian could it be? This game relies solely on its mysterious plot and manages this with two main attributes: Sound and Style. When I first saw some screenshots of this game before playing the first Episode “The Letter”, I couldn’t imagine how this pixelated art would manage to give me the creeps or offer details I need to make myself comfortable. But this game did not only manage to revive my passion for retro-styled games, it simply worked out what my introductive quote should show - that fear of the unknown is the strongest one. It feels like the devs from The Game Kitchen simply built a framework from what a scene could look like and relied on the player’s imagination to make it a truly living and frightening place. Colours are not mixed up, no they are shaded differently to create a certain mood like the warmth of a living hall.

Carlos Viola. After listening to “Crows over the City”, which is the main theme of The Last Door, you will likely want to know what the composer’s name is. Don’t thank me for that, thank him for creating this game’s amazing classical music. Every aspect of this game gets pushed by its clever and well written tones and also sound effects, whether its the creeping dark or a simple wave along the old English coast.

Owning a mouse is key for this game since you don’t need any other instruments. You have an inventory at the bottom screen, containing everything you will find and need to interact with other objects. The puzzles are logic-based, really challenging sometimes and it gets tough if you haven’t found the right object yet. This didn’t happen often to me but it might also happen to you so I should mention that. There is no hint system and no button press will highlight any useful items but your cursor will switch from a cross to a lens if you can look, or a hand if you can take or interact with something.


Pro:

• Interesting setting of Victorian England
  
• Story is heavily influenced by the work of Lovecraft and Poe
  
• Pixel Art activates and stimulates the player’s imagination
  
• One of the best soundtracks I have ever listened to
  
• Puzzles are challenging, some are really unique (just wait for chapter 3 and you’ll see) and also well implemented without letting you feel that this is only a game
  
• Well dosed scares mixed with an ubiquitous sense of fear and evil
  
• Collector’s Edition contains Bonus Scenes that aren’t available on Game Kitchens Website, providing you with even more background knowledge

Con:

• Love it or hate it - Pixel Art
  
• Puzzles start to get annoying if you can’t find the right object to interact with
  
• Paying 9,99 may sound expensive compared to how much you will pay on Game Kitchens website, just for getting the small extra scenes + achievements + Trading-Cards

You might have already recognised that I love this game. But besides my own opinion you can’t really go wrong with The Last Door. Its graphics and sound make up for a great journey into a story that even Lovecraft himself would call a masterpiece. If you are not sure about it, enter http://thelastdoor.com and check out the first episode “The Letter” for free. If you liked it, do yourself a favor and enjoy the enhanced textures, sounds and bonus content of the Collector`s Edition on Steam.

If you had told me that a point & click game with highly pixelated graphics would prove to be a disturbing and genuinely creepy experience, I would have been skeptical. I never believed that a point and click game could be scary...until now.

The Last Door takes its inspiration straight from the masters of horror: H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. The story and themes draw on various themes that they wrote about, and it is done in such a way that those who are familiar with their works will appreciate the homage done to them. For those who have not read their work, they will be chilled by this dark and disturbing story...and hopefully get interested and read the source material.

Now, if you are willing to give the pixelated graphics a chance, I think you will be amazed at how they lend themselves to the story and the overrall tone of the game. This game takes place in the Victorian time period, and the graphics call back to an earlier time as well. The disturbing scenes, I believe, are made to be even creepier in pixelated form.

I love the music in this game. It really captures the tone of a dark, gothic, Victorian, horror story. The lighting, music, and overrall atmosphere create an atmosphere of dread in which you know there will not be a happy ending.

The puzzles themselves are not difficult, but very intuitive. The gameplay is a standard point-and-click format. The episodes themselves are not that long. This game could probably be beaten in a few hours. The only negative I could find (this is a tiny nitpick) is that there are certain Easter eggs in the game, and to discover them, you really need a guide. It's not a matter of exploring everywhere, but making sure that the timing is right to unlock said Easter eggs. However, the overrall gaming experience is not hindered by this.

Since this is The Last Door Season 1, the game ended on quite a cliffhanger. It wrapped up enough questions answered but left enough to ponder and anticipate for Season 2. I am really looking forward to continuing the story.

Who would have thought that the next great horror game would be a pixelated homage to Lovecraft and Poe? I had been following The Last Door's development since its Kickstarter roots, and as soon as it popped up on Steam the game was in my cart and my wallet $10 lighter.

The game starts off ominous enough; a suicide, a letter, and a friend vowing to uncover the truth of it all. Set in the 1880's, our protagonist Devitt embarks on a journey through forgotten memories that threaten to lead him to the depths of insanity itself. That's not exactly what I was expecting from this game, but I am certainly not complaining.

I realize the graphics are a turn off for a lot of people, especially considering how the pixelated art style is used in a lot of games these days, many of which are of questionable quality. However, if you can look past them and allow yourself to delve into the atmospheric world The Game Kitchen creates, you might find that the style works to enhance the game setting rather than take away from it. The best horror stories let your imagination fill in the blanks, which is quite often much more terrifying than anything the author can show you. Here, it is almost as if The Last Door provides your mind with a canvas of outlined images and then invites your imagination to paint in the details. The result is quite effective and works much better than I would have expected for a game in this medium.

What the graphics cannot infer is tasked to the sound design which does a phenomenal job of conveying actions that we are unable to distinguish from the low fidelity images. There is a memorable scene in which the screen goes black and we must experience events solely through audio clues. This again enhances the horror of the situation as your mind works to figure out what is happening through sound alone.

Mention must be made of the amazing orchestral soundtrack that helps set the time period and builds atmosphere while providing needed emotional cues as you make your way through the game. I am not exaggerating when I say the soundtrack is worth the price tag alone. Thankfully a downloadable version will be added to the Collector's Edition very soon.

Amazing atmosphere means nothing without a compelling narrative to pull it all together, and this is where The Last Door truly excels. Each episode is created very much like a chapter in a novel with a narrative structure that leads smoothly through the story while allowing the flow of events to move back and forth through flashbacks. This serves to build the protagonist's back story while unfolding the mystery in an engaging manner. As such, it takes more than a single play through to appreciate missed details that further develop the story. Once finished, the mini-sodes only available in this Collector's Edition fill in tiny details surrounding the characters and events, further building the world and mythos. The season ends in a cliffhanger with quite a few unresolved threads that lead into the next, yet the story is well rounded despite it. I can see the potential for this story translating into other mediums with how well it has been plotted, written and structured.

Having said all that, I have yet to mention anything about game play. When a story is this good, sometimes it is easy to overlook flaws in the game itself, not that there are many here assuming you enjoy classic LucasArts-style adventure games. The Last Door is your very standard point and click adventure that has you searching for items to complete tasks which opens up additional areas of exploration. The game logic is pretty straightforward without anything overly obtuse. Objective clues may take a bit of thought but make sense and are not too vague. Some of the game's difficulty indeed stems from the lower quality graphics making a few obtainable/clickable objects unrecognizable. However, the pointer does a good job of alerting you to areas that have actions, one just needs a little patience to thoroughly search their surroundings before moving on.

I can go on and on about the many things I love about this game, but it's best for one to fully explore and experience it for oneself. The Last Door exceeded my expectations in so many ways, I will surely follow and support these developers in their future endeavors. It seems as if finding a truly great indie game these days is like finding a diamond in the rough. Fortunately, this diamond sparkled bright enough to draw my interest.

One final note - The Last Door can be played on Kongregate for those who may be interested in trying it out before purchasing. Episode 4, however, is currently only available through game pledges on the developer's website and in this Collector's Edition, which also includes 4 exclusive mini-sodes and achievements.