A House of Many Doors creaks open September 24

A House of Many Doors is a Sunless Sea-a-like set in a “parasite dimension that steals things and people from other worlds”. But wait, that parasite dimension is also a house. A house with legs. And it's kind of a train too. “Exploring in a train that scuttles on mechanical legs,” the website says, “you will discover bizarre civilizations, befriend your crew, write procedurally-generated poetry, and cling to life and sanity”. In that respect, how is it any different from a typical Sunday?

HOMD is a game you should be interested in if you're interested in Failbetter's output, or other titles that respect words and imagination. Pixel Trickery's game has been known about for a while now, but it finally has a proper release date: September 24. That's a wee bit later than the “Summer 2016” estimate given previously, but it's not like you don't have anything else to play in the meantime *eyes backlog glaring from the corner, quickly shuts down Steam*.

“So I know, I know, this represents a two-month delay on the original posited release date,” developer Pixel Trickery admits in a website post. “I do hate to do the typical Kickstarter thing. You know the thing? The thing where they tell you that they need to release later than expected. But I suppose this is me doing exactly that thing”.

“This is an enormous game. It will have over 200,000 words of text (about three novels’ worth, or one Game of Thrones book – and we all know how long those take to write). Considering its scope, it is also being made on a rather small budget (although it’s still a higher budget than I ever expected, and a blessing!)”

So yes, September 24. Check your calendar. I don't think you have anything on. No, you can probably push that wedding back.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.