Run Rabbit: Haunted House (Valencia)

Light Horror, Done Right

The house has been abandoned for decades after the police found the body of a renowned scientist who lived in the house with his daughter, besides she was never found…

In the absence of any evidence at the crime scene, some believe that after murdering the girl, the scientist dispose of the girl´s body and afterwards committed suicide with a razor blade.

Since that day everyone stays away from it, many don´t dare to even look into its window.  The neighbours avoid talking about what they have seen or heard.

Now the current owner of the house has hired the Paranormal Hunters Corporation to investigate and find out what really happened in that house and what still happens today…

However, Paranormal Hunters Corporation wants to find external help for such a complicated task.

Your mission is to enter that house and find any conclusive clue that helps to clarify what happened between those walls. However, shortly after you enter that house, you will realize that you are facing something terrible… what the hell is it? Is it an unknown paranormal entity?

Do not be intimidated by the fear, do not allow that the presence who watches you in the house to scare you. Do you think your team can work together to solve the case and to escape the haunted house? If the answer is Yes, sign up for the case today.

Valencia was on our to-play list for a long time, and having finally managed to find good flights we booked in for a few days of Spanish sun. We started the trip with some games down in Murcia and Cartagena but had just got the train back up to Valencia where we met up with our team-mates, James and Charlie.

Haunted House was the first of two games we had booked at Run Rabbit, as we were entering Medieval Dungeon right after. Although they are in the same location, we had to enter through two different doors. For Haunted House, we entered through the door on the left, and found ourselves in a darkened area where we were greeted by our gamesmaster.

When we booked this game we were given two options, one option with a live actor, and the other without – of course we paid the extra and went with the live actor option. The live actor version does obviously come with extra rules, but these are rules to ensure the actor remains safe, and you know how you’re supposed to interact with them. In this game, the actor was ‘blind’ and if they appeared, we had to hide and make no noise.

It would appear that this game, and also Medieval Dungeon were purchased from The Chamber in Prague. So if you have plague games in Prague with the same names as these games, there is a good chance that these will be the same games at Run Rabbit.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

As I said above, we paid for the live actor version of Haunted House, and if you’re able to cope with a little light horror it’s the version I would recommend. The live actor doesn’t change the puzzles as such, but it does add a different dynamic to the game which we felt made it more fun.

The Haunted House had a kinda ambient-creepy vibe where you never really knew what, or who was around the corner. There were  ambient noises and sounds played to announce when the live actor was present, and when it was clear to resume solving puzzles – I quite enjoyed this system as it made it clear when we needed to hide, and when we could just get puzzly.

The set design was really rather good, with an authentic feeling Victorian house-vibe going on. The sense of adventure was also done well as we found many spaces to explore and found ourselves going back-and-forth between them. Sometimes as a team, sometimes alone – which in a horror experience is always daunting!

There was one little piece of set design that I particularly enjoyed, it was pretty small and really made no difference to the game at all, but it just helped to add a moment of uncertainty, and possibly humour when we first encountered it. ‘Silly and fun’ is always welcome in a horror experience!

The ending of this game was also light-hearted too. They had a great way to announce that we had completed our mission and have us end on a high.

PUZZLES

Haunted House had a good variety of puzzles, puzzles that saw us interacting with things around the house that felt like they had been in place for a long time. This is one of those games that relies on subtle tech to help make things feel mysterious, rather than just plugging a code into a padlock.

A good chunk of the puzzles, once solved, saw things happening around the room, sometimes without us initially noticing and then wondering if we had completed the task, and if we had, what was the payoff.

The game played out in a mostly linear fashion, which seems to be the case with most horror experiences as there are generally set times/moments where the live actor will appear to add a bit of tension. Fortunately, the live actor added to the experience and we didn’t find ourselves getting annoyed at them appearing when we were in the middle of a puzzle.

Observation, searching, teamwork, pattern recognition, wordplay, and generally just some hunting around in the darkness made up the bulk of the puzzles.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

As one might expect with a haunted house, clues were rather ghosty in nature, floating through the airwaves in the form of a disembodied voice from a ghostly ‘Sofia’. There were also ways in which the live actor could subtly offer guidance without players noticing. I personally can’t recall needing help in this game, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t receive any.

The live actor element really added to this game, and the team running our game played it perfectly. I believe the team was Denys and Calim, and kudos to them, they got the scare level just right to enable us to stay on edge, while still being able to focus and solve the puzzles.

ANYTHING ELSE

As far as supernatural horror-games go, Haunted House felt quite tame, especially for Spain, with more of an emphasis on the puzzles and the story than on the horror/ghostly elements. But that shift in focus meant that the game was fun and clever, with moments of adrenaline, rather than utterly terrifying.

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 4 Players

Address: C. de Jesús i Maria, 10, Extramurs, 46008 València, Valencia, Spain

Website: https://runrabbit.es/