Review: House of Hints - High School Detention

RATING: 3 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 14:36

It’s alright… ’cause we are stuck in our favorite place to be, school!

Story

Graduation is nearing. But, your grades might be holding you back another year. There is not enough time to raise your grades … Is there another way to change them? You are in Detention, which happens to be next to the principal’s office. Can you sneak in without getting caught?

Back in high school again, but this time things aren’t going our way. House of Hints sends us back to the 90’s in a classic schoolroom scenario some of us may have faced, not having the grades to graduate.

Being the rebels that we are, why pay attention when we can just cruise our way by? Though our school mascot, Bruno the bulldog, sure is disappointed in us. Time to sleep this one off in our last class of the day.

As the bell rings we wake up in detention, our current favorite subject. Instead of actually trying in class, we have to be able to scheme our way out of all this somehow.

From the looks of it we will be stuck here for another school year and there is no bell to save us! But it’s alright, we can find a way in to the principal’s office and cheat our way to graduate.

Scenic

If we had a teacher in here with us, this is an actual classroom. It’s just enough to give us flashbacks to those dreams of forgetting to finish a big project right before class!

We start off in our student desks with that authentic hard plastic feel we all remember from class. Of course gum can be found under these desks, which we may or may not have added to.

Various subjects coursework lines the walls, after all we are in detention for failing multiple subjects. The bookshelf is packed with textbooks that we of course never bothered to look at in our studies until now. The typical analog clock ticks away letting us know every second we are stuck here in detention.

Luckily someone left the key to the janitor’s closet, filled to the brim with cleaning supplies and the coveted key to our principal’s office. There is something fishy going on back here though. It looks like our janitor is hiding something within the supply closet.

A nice touch added in was the soundtrack playing during our game. It ties in perfectly with the school theme and brings us back to the early 90’s. Of course the Saved by the Bell theme is part of it.

Puzzles

With our totally 90’s high school, we are set in place to actually figure out some of these subjects we failed. While it looks like homework at first, we touch up on some basic arithmetic, roman numerals, and hit the textbooks we never opened.

Once inside our principal’s office, we set off to disable the security measures set in place to prevent tampering with grades. Sifting through the slew of staff records, sports awards, and student schedules, there is plenty to keep any group busy. Each puzzle drives us to unlocking a way to boost our grades and escape the clutches of high school forever.

Our main goal is to find the final grade sheet and make some slight modifications to it, in our favor of course. If we can submit these better grades, we can finally graduate!

There is a good mix of puzzles in detention, favoring the combination lock code puzzles while also implementing some light scavenging and tech based implementations of placing things where they should go.

In lieu of calling for hints, a nudging system is used. Players will be given small tidbits of information when they stall on a task. At times this system can be frustrating if you think you are behind in the room, but the right amount of information is given to make sure the game flows well without hiccups. At no time did we feel we needed to call in a hard hint as the nudges guided us in the right direction.

Overall

House of Hints gives us a blast from the past in High School Detention. We can relive those dreams of waking up in high school and fearing we will fail, but this time we have full power to meddle with the grading sheet at the end of the day.

While everything flowed logically and there were no major issues, the theme here lends itself to having the room play out as expected. This took away a bit of the surprise and delight moments that we look forward to in a game. But don’t let that detract from a solid game, and don’t let your grades slip!