GAME REVIEW – Burnhouse Lane (PC)

By Marty Mulrooney

Burnhouse Lane is the latest horror adventure game from Rem Michalski, aka Harvester Games. It tells the compelling story of Angie Weather, an agency nurse with a terminal illness who must complete five impossible (and gruesome) tasks to win her life back. Following on from the success of the critically acclaimed Devil Came Through Here trilogy – The Cat Lady, Downfall: Redux and Lorelai – was always going to be a fairly tall order, but Burnhouse Lane builds on the strengths of its predecessors to offer something undoubtedly familiar yet ultimately different.

Rem Michalski‘s previous games never shied away from difficult subject matters, and the story of Angie Weather is no different. As the game begins, she is contemplating killing herself following the death of her husband –  a former patient – and her own terminal cancer diagnosis. Thankfully, her eventual suicide attempt fails through sheer dumb luck (and a weak wooden ceiling beam), as what follows is a horror adventure well worth experiencing.

After failing to kill herself, Angie decides to accept a previously refused job in the English countryside near the town of Honiton. There, an old gentleman by the name of George – who is showing early signs of dementia – needs a live-in nurse to look after him for a few weeks (and make him plenty of sandwiches). His remote cottage and farm will become Angie’s home for the remainder of the game.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a Rem Michalski game if Angie simply kept George washed, warm and well-fed for a few weeks before heading back home. She soon steps through a mysterious doorway in the cottage basement that leads her to Burnhouse Lane, a dilapidated street that is home to lost souls, the walking dead and a giant ‘Burned Cat’. With some light combat thrown into the mix for good measure (more on that later), Burnhouse Lane is like the lovechild of The Cat Lady (Michalski’s unique brand of psychological horror), Resident Evil (combat where every bullet counts) and Silent Hill (a nightmarish otherworld).

Differentiating Burnhouse Lane from its predecessors, the mysterious Burned Cat doesn’t grant immortality like the duplicitous Queen of Maggots in The Cat Lady and Lorelai, and the giant feline appears to be genuinely trustworthy. Instead, he offers Angie the chance to cure her illness by killing those who deserve it. Our heroic nurse can and will die (requiring a previous save to be reloaded) and must protect herself with a variety of weapons including an axe and a shotgun. Thankfully, despite some inherent jankiness these combat sequences almost act like additional puzzles, with just the right amount of bullets available to achieve the desired outcome.

The inclusion of combat and shooting – combined with ashtrays that serve as save points, much like the typewriters in Resident Evil – makes this Michalski’s scariest game to date. Whether heading into a park on Burnhouse Lane to fight a grotesquely overweight woman or fending off the faceless ‘Curator’ in an abandoned wax museum, both Angie and the player must keep their wits about them – failure to do so will result in an often gruesome death. There is also a dodge mechanic that works well enough (in certain situations), but some light platforming sections fall a bit flat because the controls aren’t quite up to the task (I guess not everything can be paw-fect).

However, despite these action elements the game is still fundamentally focused on storytelling and decision-making. With multiple endings available some of these decisions can be excruciating to make, forcing the player to dig deep and do some real soul-searching. It helps that the voice acting is excellent too, especially for Angie – with her developing relationship with George being a particular highlight (for this player at least). There is also the expected roster of psychopaths and killers just crying out to be stopped by any means necessary; taking them out of action is immensely satisfying.

Graphically, this is the best project Harvester Games has released to date, with wonderful use of colour effectively contrasting the real world with the fiery hellscape of Burnhouse Lane. The detail is exquisite – even during close-ups – and the animation is pleasingly smooth despite the lower budget. Shifting to HD with Lorelai obviously stood Rem Michalski in good stead, as Burnhouse Lane is never anything less than beautiful even when it’s making the player feel uneasy and on edge.

Complementing the professional voice acting is another memorable and haunting soundtrack by micAmic (and guests). This is of course the musical pseudonym of Michał Michalski (Rem Michalski’s brother), who has taken a further hand in Burnhouse Lane by designing all of the character art too. The Michalski brothers’ partnership is obviously one that works well, and I can’t wait to see what they do next – Burnhouse Lane really is an incredible achievement for such a small development team.

When I first played The Cat Lady over a decade ago, I wasn’t sure about the decision to implement direct controls. However, I was fully sold on the idea by the time the credits rolled, and I was delighted by the immediacy it brought to Downfall: Redux and Lorelai in the years that followed. Burnhouse Lane feels even more immediate thanks to its increased – yet never overwhelming – focus on direct combat, and it was a joy to experience it on the big screen via the Steam Link app using a Steam Controller.

At 12-14 hours in length (easily double the length of the previous three games), Burnhouse Lane is a wonderful horror adventure that is quite frankly unmissable for those who loved the Devil Came Through Here trilogy. However, despite some subtle nods to those previous adventures, this new experience works perfectly well as a standalone story. It remixes the things I’ve always loved about Rem’s games – the fine line between good and evil, the shades of grey inside us all, wonderful music, impossible decisions and life-affirming moments of triumph – while still managing to offer something that feels exciting, fresh and new.

It might not be for the faint of heart – and there are a few frustrating moments that have undoubtedly been caused by the growing pains of trying something slightly different – but Burnhouse Lane is yet another success for Harvester Games because it will tell each player something about themselves that perhaps they didn’t know before… or didn’t want to admit. Angie Weather can beat cancer. She can save lives and take them. Whether she will or not depends entirely on you. So, what the hell are you waiting for?

9 OUT OF 10