Video Game Review: Riddlewood Manor

Release Year: 2025
Playing Year: FA2025
Developer/Publisher: Peanut Button
Time to Beat: ~5 Hours

Thoughts: This is new for me. I found this game during Steam Next Fest maybe a week ago, and it’s the first time I have played a game demo and immediately purchased it upon release. I was surprised there was almost two hours of content in the demo - almost half of my playtime. Anyways, on with the review.

I love this game.

I have tried time and time again to play classic point-and-click mystery/adventure games like Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango, and just end up hating them. I don’t understand the appeal and they are hard in ways I don’t have patience for. So, I was apprehensive to even download the demo for this game. It was really the art style that drew me in. This game looks exactly how playing spooky flash games in the 00s felt. Riddlewood Manor makes you feel smart, and it does it with momentum. This is really important for me. I can’t stand busting my ass over a puzzle just to get stuck, and stuck, and stuck, and stuck. It makes the game take forever and I feel progressively more stupid. While I did get stuck three times in my playthrough, I probably could have figured them out with a day off the game, but I was impatient. Every other instance of my almost six hours was Jimmy Neutron brain-blasting fun. Puzzles just feed into each other. It’s mostly self-contained, so you can lock-in on a room and just feel like a genius for 20 or 30 minutes. I loved it! That’s the momentum - you get started and piece everything together like a rube goldberg machine.

The gameplay, animations, and music are all great. It creates great ambiance and makes the thrill of exploration and light jumpscares hit - though nothing too scary! I’m not a horror girl and I was fine. What really surprised me was the story. There are moments where I was overcome with laughter, and moments where my heart would jump or stay at heightened thrill. But truly it’s the humor that sticks with me. You get caught up in the atmosphere and the seriousness of the puzzles only to have a wild, out-of-left-field, slapstick moment catches you off guard. You can’t do anything else but laugh! I will hold off because you should just play this game. It’s not too long, and it really isn’t that difficult, especially given how hard these games can be.

Do I think they stuck the landing? Mostly. I know there are multiple endings, so what I can say of the one I rolled credits on, it was cool, but not the highlight of the game.

Completed on Halloween night :) Just have to put that out there.