Reviews
‘Stay Out of the House’ Review – Why the Retro Slasher Is Puppet Combo’s Best Game to Date
Puppet Combo’s games have been a hot topic of discussion lately in the horror gaming community. Some people view them as paper-thin mechanically with not much beyond the PS1 aesthetics. Others view the games as the future of horror gaming, providing players with authentically terrifying scares. Regardless of how you feel, there’s really no harm done in a labor of love horror game that’s available to fans for only a few bucks. Puppet Combo is also pretty much keeping the slasher genre alive in the gaming medium, producing games that are obviously inspired by our favorite knife-wielding maniacs.
Suffice to say, I’m a pretty big fan of Puppet Combo as a whole. And it’s with great excitement that I can confidently say Stay Out of the House is the best game from them to date.
Stay Out of the House puts players in a fight for their life from an escape room of death. After two prologues that set the scene for the narrative, players find themselves trapped in the house of a sadistic cannibal killer. The game heavily borrows inspiration from Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and oddly enough, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. The story is a simple set up but soon unravels into something that I became infatuated with, a first time for me playing a Puppet Combo game. I was surprised with the themes of religious fanaticism; the juxtaposition of religious belief with acts of unspeakable horror provide for a more thought provoking experience than usual. The story is light but it’s one open to a great amount of interpretation.
Gameplay in Stay Out of the House is probably where I was most impressed. The game is formatted as an “escape room” type game with light immersion elements. Players will explore the cannibal’s bloody home in search of a way out, finding items along the way. Using a lighter I was able to navigate dark hallways and bedrooms, while using a screwdriver I was able to enter the vents of the house and move discreetly. The ultimate goal is to get out of the house alive… by any means.
This is where a surprise element comes in. There isn’t a game over when you’re caught by the cannibal but you’re instead recaptured and the house becomes harder to navigate with new obstacles and traps. The game encourages perfect runs to avoid harder elements. I found myself critically thinking about how to approach situations and get out with as little confrontation as possible. It is by far Puppet Combo’s most mechanically deep game and I’m stoked to finally see them deliver a game that feels like a complete experience right out of the gate.
As always, Puppet Combo delivers on the PS1 and VHS era retro aesthetic but there’s a great amount of options to tailor your experience including a bevy of filters and an FOV slider. While you’ll be pressed to keep the VHS filter on, I like having the option of being able to turn it off. Having more options is never a bad thing. Performance on console is great as well, as I never ran into any issues or crashes in my time with the game. For the record, I played on PS5 for the entirety of my review.
Do I recommend Stay Out of the House? You bet. I usually recommend giving every Puppet Combo game a try, but there’s something special about Stay Out of the House. Puppet Combo delivers a game with a fascinating story, and deeper gameplay mechanics that all blend together very well. If you’re a fan, you’re in for a treat. If you’ve never played a Puppet Combo game before, this is a great one to jump into. For $15, this game is an absolute value. In fact, Stay Out of the House is easily one of my favorite games this year.
Stay Out of the House is now available on Xbox One, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and the Nintendo Switch.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Movies
‘Recluse’ Review – Harrowing Haunted House Horror With Lots Of Skeletons In Its Closet [Tribeca 2026]
A haunted house story is tense, terrifying storytelling when it’s properly executed. There’s been a growing tendency in horror to blend together harrowing haunted house stories with traumatic homecomings. A family member’s illness or death triggers a return to something dark that was intentionally left behind. Recluse hits all the tropes that one expects to find in this type of horror film, yet it manages to push this story in a daring, disturbing new direction that uses sound as a superpower.
It’s a unique lens to experience a familiar story about family secrets, generational trauma, unresolved grief, and the importance of not just legacy, but preservation. It’s a hell of a directorial debut from Henry Chaisson that’s guaranteed to get under the audience’s skin as they’re dragged through this painful, toxic tale.
Recluse is a gothic haunted house story where an isolated audio engineer, Joan (Sasha Frolova), returns to her family’s estate to check in on her father after he suffers a terrible accident. Joan suddenly discovers something much more sinister that paints her family’s tragedies in a very different light. Chaisson’s debut functions as a fascinating companion piece to this year’s undertone, which does a lot of the same things.
These two films make for a fascinating case of parallel thinking that tackles comparable subject matter through a similar lens, albeit in a bigger, less claustrophobic story in Recluse’s case. In fact, it’s the perfect horror film for anyone who was let down by undertone and didn’t feel like it brought enough to the table. It’s a considerably more conventional horror film, but this isn’t meant to denigrate its high quality. Recluse may hit some familiar notes, but it’s a scary, well-crafted haunted house horror story that goes for the jugular.
A gripping mystery that involves the tragic, unresolved circumstances that surround Joan’s mother teases a chilling connection to the recent horrors that have afflicted her father. Joan desperately tries to put these pieces together and give her family some sense of grander peace before she’s pulled under and becomes another victim of this festering curse that’s systematically worked its way through the Wyatt family. By doing so, Recluse digs into some deeper commentary on collective trauma, a very literal look at the “sins of the father” adage, and how one selfish decision can ripple through generations and fracture off into different dilemmas. By the end, Recluse has brilliantly flipped the powerful concept of legacy on its head by illustrating the horrors and sense of entitlement that can be born out of this idea.
A legacy is just another name for a curse under the right context.
”Listen” is a simple but powerful command from Joan’s father that she briefly obsesses over. In a way, it becomes Recluse’s grander mission statement, whether it’s in response to Joan listening to the people in her life, the signals that her body and mind are telling her, or the world’s greater whims. It’s important to reconnect with these grounding pillars, especially when it feels like control is slipping away.
Recluse excels with how audio and soundscapes can create entire universes that are full of rich details that transport individuals to these environments. There’s also a level of objectivity when it comes to audio recordings and the evergreen permanence that they’re able to provide. Joan’s career as an audio engineer makes sense for someone who wants to cling to hard evidence and proof of existence. It provides great insight into Joan without ever getting lost in contrived exposition.
Joan’s entire life is built around audio engineering, and so it makes sense that Recluse features excellent sound design that really goes above and beyond with its production elements. All of the sound design is expertly handled and turns the film into something special. These auditory elements intuitively keep the audience on edge so that they’re more susceptible to the actual scares that eventually strike. The smallest sound effect gets turned into a crushing, cacophonous assault. It’s a really effective way to build terror. Writer/Director Chaisson also handles the film’s music, which achieves a sublime, unnerving dissonance that further heightens the free-floating anxiety.
The story at the center of Recluse is slightly generic in some respects, but the film’s visual language and tone make it feel distinctly memorable. It also doesn’t hurt that the home that Joan returns to is basically an eerie art studio that’s full of contorted paintings. Recluse never struggles to generate mounting dread and terror that pump through every scene. Powerful, thoughtful cinematography consistently reinforces the film’s themes. Joan is constantly reflected in different surfaces or viewed through mirrors. She’s also often confined to tight, constricting framing that all speaks to her refracted identity during this moment of loss and her attempts to regain agency and control by making sense of something that’s seemingly unexplainable.
Recluse is full of truly disturbing visuals that make it seem like Joan is lost in a dream that turns out to be an extended nightmare. It’s a surreal journey reminiscent of invasive psychological horror like Silent Hill, with a touch of Sinister and Hereditary thrown in for good measure. There are so many individual frames that could endlessly fuel urban legends and creepypastas.
It does a great job with how it presents Joan’s fragile state of mind, where chilling flashes of the past sneak up on her and unresolved trauma manifests into unsettling imagery. There are endless shots that are obscured in darkness, or shadow is creeping in from the corners of frames like a suffocating force of nature. It’s very rare that a scene is fully lit. It leads to a very lonely, isolating atmosphere that’s easy to get lost in.
Chaisson’s debut stands out from the many other high-minded haunted house horror films without succumbing to the same pretensions that often drag down these stories. It’s a grief-stricken character study that’s full of upsetting visuals that scratch at something visceral and raw. The horror elements connect, and the answers to its grander mystery provide an appropriate and believable sense of closure. Those who are looking for an atmospheric horror film that isn’t afraid to be different while still channeling something real will appreciate Recluse.
Recluse made its world premiere at Tribeca; release info TBD.
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