Charnel House Trilogy opens to a title screen with a picture of three stacked books lit by soft lantern light while haunting classical-esque piano music plays. Any one of the three books can be clicked on to step into that part of the tale. Fans of recent years’ point-and-click releases can anticipate sinking into the comforting familiarity of the handiwork and voicework of genre names such as Abe Goldfarb, Ben Chandler, Ivan Ulyanov, and more.

The game is broken into three ‘books’: Inhale, Sepulchre, and Exhale. I’m assuming this is why the word ‘trilogy’ was included in the game’s title, although to me the short length makes calling it a trilogy a bit of a misnomer. Also, from a theming standpoint, it would have been more clever to give Sepulchre a breathing-related title.

The main character for Inhale and Exhale is Alex Davenport. Since the player spends a lot more game time with Alex, it’s not surprising that you learn more about her. She’s a gamer and a reader going through a recent breakup. The main character for Sepulchre is Harold Lang. He’s a professor of archaeology and a museum curator. It’s hard to get as much of a sense of his character since the player doesn’t spend as much time with him. Alex and Harold only have a brief interaction in game, although they are somehow mutually connected by Kat, Alex’s friend and Harold’s field assistant. Both of them are travelling to meet her. There’s also a cast of supporting characters such as Don (the train conductor), Rob (Alex’s neighbor), and Lydia (a little girl who is also on the train). Considering how quickly the game moves, it’s a testament to the game’s design that you learn as much about the characters as you do in such a short amount of time.

Charnel House Trilogy tries to explore lots of themes: archaeology, earth, death, worms. However, I don’t even think that you can call the game anticlimactic because it never builds up enough excitement to be a disappointing letdown. If it does build up anything, it’s loose ends. For example, what is the use of the green balloon? Was that meant to be used in the alternate endings that didn’t come to fruition? As it is, the single ending lacks closure and seems to imply that it isn’t the correct ending since multiple characters literally say it wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

The credits end with the statement, “Augur Peak will rise 2016.” Considering it’s now 2020, the developer website has many dead links, and I couldn’t find any whisper of news about the sequel, its imminent arrival does not seem promising. If it ever does get released, I will totally play it, but as it is, the fact that Charnel House Trilogy spends so much time building up for a non-existent sequel weakens the game.

The game has fairly standard retro pixel art and point-and-click mechanics for the genre. From what I saw, the game developers don’t seem to have tried anything innovative in terms of gameplay or anything interesting in terms of color theory, etc. The best that can be said for the puzzles is that they make sense in the story’s context. For example, the character had a good reason for needing to find something to trigger the memory of a forgotten password. The game even attempts to poke fun at the tendency of this genre to create overly elaborate solutions for puzzles. However, the joke falls short since there aren’t really any puzzles that you have to mentally wrestle to solve. Sometimes the next step is outright told to the player character, and even when it isn’t, there’s a miniscule set of options to try. Maybe to an inexperienced point-and-click player the puzzles would be more challenging.

It’s always a plus when there are missable achievements because it does add some replay value. In this case, however, even the achievements lack a certain verve.

At $5.99 USD and 2 hours playtime, Charnel House Trilogy technically meets my movie ticket rule of having enough content to be the length of a movie for a movie ticket price. That said, compared to other similarly priced games in the genre that offer more complete story arcs and more challenging puzzles to solve, it may be better to wait for a sale.

Despite the delightful presence and involvement of point-and-click genre greats, Charnel House Trilogy suffers from being overly familiar, lacking innovation, and being a set-up to, at the moment, nothing. That said, it’s a worthwhile game to scratch the point-and-click itch if picked up on sale. Happy gaming!

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