There are no ghosts in Galley House

March 11, 2025 5:49 AM

Why don't you come down to Galley House this Saturday evening?… I have recently acquired something to keep you interested if you decide to come. It's not perfect, but sometimes when you close your eyes, it's like someone else is in the house… Type Help is a new, free, browser-based, text-based deductive mystery game by William Rous.

"The Galley House was discovered with a number of dead bodies and no clear culprit; all you have are transcripts of audio from its inhabitants, divided by room and by time period.... The horrors of the Galley House...can be documented but they cannot be fully understood. Type Help is closer to Lovecraftian tales of confounding, effable forces and movies like It Follows where chaos infects the clockwork of calculation."—from Adrian Hon's blog post The Gothic Mystery of Type Help.

The author compares the game to others like Return of the Obra Dinn and The Roottrees are Dead (which was popular around these parts in 2023).

posted by bcwinters (12 comments total)

I would strongly suggest not reading the Adrian Hon blog post, which has a ton of spoilers. If you want to read a blog post about the game with minimal spoilers, Andrew Plotkin wrote about the mechanics here.

Or go in without a blog post! The game is incredible! Just dive in.
posted by kserra at 7:31 AM on March 11 [3 favorites]

Oh! Apologies if that first review is too spoilery. Don’t look at the spreadsheet screenshot. I would say the first few grafs just give you a few thoughts about the parser/engine and vibes.
posted by bcwinters at 8:11 AM on March 11 [1 favorite]

I keep wanting to propose the name "Tabeleaux Mortant" for this genre of looking through a bunch of static scenes figuring out how their members perished. This is a nice entry in the genre.
posted by egypturnash at 8:24 AM on March 11 [3 favorites]

That quote is the first time I learned “effable” is a word. That it is the exact *wrong* word makes it somehow better. Per the warnings I will stay away from the blog, but am looking forward to the game.

I assume I can do it on the pad vs. dusting off the laptop?
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 8:43 AM on March 11

This is great, thanks for sharing! Just spent my whole lunch hour playing. I bounced off of Obra Dinn (I liked the gameplay but the art style worked against me. I found it hard to discern key details), but this reminds me a lot of Her Story, which I loved and the author also credits as an inspiration.

A bit stuck at the moment (have a good chunk of Act I identified and poking into Act II) and sadly have to get some work done, but can't wait to come back later.
posted by Roommate at 10:37 AM on March 11

Oooh this is too addicting, I put it down then my brain keeps working at that knot, where was X? How did Y? And the little breakthrough feels sooo satisfying.
posted by muddgirl at 7:04 PM on March 11

I loooooved this, but I think I'm missing one piece of the experience: I can't figure out how to npghnyyl thrff yrggref ba gur unatzna. Like I mean literally where do I enter this? I've tried glcvat gur yrggre vgfrys, glcvat n thrff sbe gur jbeq, glcvat "thrff: n", glcvat "thrff n", rgp.
posted by peppercorn at 10:13 PM on March 11

Lol I was stuck there too but it's really like any other command. Gb thrff gur yrggre r glcr "unatzna r"
posted by muddgirl at 10:50 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]

[slaps forehead] Thank you, and I'm so glad I got that last little painful garnish!
posted by peppercorn at 12:28 AM on March 12

Wow. Played through most of this yesterday evening, finished it up this morning... and absolutely loved it!

(note: I resorted to a color-coded spreadsheet REALLY fast, which helped me immensely to keep track of things)

Any recommendations for similar titles?
posted by stormyteal at 10:15 AM on March 12

This definitely gets weirder as I go.
posted by inexorably_forward at 2:34 AM on March 13

Tom Francis (formerly of PCGamer & more recently Gunpoint & Tactical Breach Wizards etc.) did a video blog/review about it.
posted by juv3nal at 5:50 PM on March 13