Notes of Obsession: Home Alone 3.5

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In Notes of Obsession you play as a mother who is, “supposedly” home alone. As I began to play, and the character got up from the couch, I began to realize something wasn’t quite right. The graphics were spectacular, probably since the game had been made in the Unreal Engine. There was a pretty sweet looking knife in a display case I unfortunately couldn’t take to make me safer. So, I admired my surroundings and the mechanics of how my character walked. I made my way towards a door which suddenly slammed shut in my face. After freaking out, yelling some unprofessional words, and running away I realized that I actually wasn’t alone in this house.

(The room you start the game in)

I made my way out of the living room and into the dining room. As I continued towards the stairs, there were several eerie sounds that I could hear. I figured some terrible monster was waiting to attack me at any second, so I quickened my pace. I made my way up the stairs and, after checking some rooms, I found what must’ve been the woman’s son’s room. When I stepped into the room, the door shut violently behind me, leaving me trapped. In the prologue it said there was a music box that my character's husband had gotten her on his business travels. I wound it up and the music began to play, and then everything began to change.

(The kid's room)

A red sigil appeared on the wall before me and of course I had to touch it. Then, out of nowhere, something began to rise on the other side of a curtain. It looked like some sort of hideous looking monster. I’m incredibly curious and I figured I might as well check out what this thing could be, and maybe it would even want to be my friend. I slowly made my way around to find that there was nothing there. I couldn’t decide if I was being messed with, or if the music box I’d found was the root of all evil. But, I was determined to find the truth

(Using the music box for the first time)

It appeared that the music box had some sort of magical properties at least, and maybe it conjured some sort of terrible monster to torment me. After the encounter with my friendly neighborhood curtain monster, I went to leave the room. For some bizarre reason, the game made it so I went into the closet of the room. Thus began the puzzles of going into the room then the closet, using the music box to find sigils and progress on. Eventually the monster thing got annoyed with my legendary puzzle, sigil finding skills. It made some awful growls and groans as I entered the closet for the last time. Once that finally stopped happening, I exited the closet, finally free to go about my adventure elsewhere.

(The curtain monster guy)

I made my way back downstairs to find that the knife display case was now shut, with several hollow sigil symbols on it. I decided to test my trusty music box, which lit up a sigil on the wall. After interacting with the sigil, it appeared on the case door. So, I began my search of the house to get that puppy out. As I left the room again, some terrifying looking monster crawling on the floor attacked me. I barely managed to escape, screaming as I sprinted down the hallway to the dining room. A game of cat and mouse began, with me running from cover to cover in search of sigils.

(The monster starts it's chase)

The rest of the game I will leave for you to discover. Notes of Obsession is free to download online at the game makers, Creepy Stairs, website. You can just google it and find it right on top of the search results. The coolest thing to me about this game is that 17 Swedish students from the University of Skövde made this game in 10 weeks. This was a short, but sweet game that really made me think about the deeper point of it, and the horrors that unfolded on my playthrough. I had an amazing time playing it and I’d recommend that anyone who likes horror games to go ahead and give it a try.