If the Steam storefront description of Clown in a House, which states players may learn a thing or two about themselves while playing, isn’t enough to make your eyes roll, then perhaps its opening card will. “Creativity is insanity. Writer’s block is a brief moment of lucidity,” it reads. Fortunately, Clown in a House quickly drops out of Philosophy 101 and leaves behind something decidedly witty and charming.
Clown in a House
Developer: Krispy Animation
Price: $7.99
Platform: Steam
MonsterVine was supplied with a Steam code for review
Clown in a House is exactly what its name says. You play as a clown locked in a house, and to get out you’ll use typical point-and-click mechanics — like pointing and clicking — to interact with objects and solve puzzles. Ultimately, your goal is to see each of the game’s 19 endings, most of which are bleak and depressing. Delightfully, some endings can come by accident after interacting with a random object: Sitting at a vanity desk for too long, the clown will wither away and reveal one such ending.
All the while, the omnipresent voice of story writer Kris Patrick is there to berate you for doing what you’re supposed to be doing. Examine a shelf more than once? Patrick is there to tell you you’re wasting your time. Using an item from your inventory in the wrong place? Sorry stupid. Try again. Going around the house to find Clown in a House’s collectibles? Boom. Roasted.
This is my favorite part about Clown in a House. Disembodied, cynical narrators are nothing new. The Stanley Parable, developed a decade ago, is the earliest game I can recall having one such character, but I’m sure there are earlier examples. Patrick’s self-injection, however, is what makes their own narrator unique, fresh, and novel. I can’t recall a time I’ve seen a game creator literally put themself in a game the way Patrick has in Clown in a House, blurring the line between the game’s reality and our own. It also makes the story more personal. This is why I still balk at the Steam description. This is less a game about discovering “a thing or two about yourself” and more about understanding Patrick’s creative process or lack thereof. As you play, you may get the idea that Clown in a House is a diversion from other projects, which is the only rationale I’ve created thus far to make up for the game’s cringe-y opening card. 
(By the way, I recommend turning on text-to-speech in the settings. It’s a basic Microsoft Sam reading of the game’s dialogue, but it adds vivacity to Patrick’s narrator.)
Clown in a House’s central theme is relatable and easy to pluck out. Creative jobs are hard to come by. It’s much easier to become a laborer and to build a wall between you and your creative outlets. In this way, Clown in a House is bleak and depressing — and it remains so if you don’t take the time to find the game’s true ending, which I suspect many players won’t. Clown in a House uses dark humor to combat its frigid worldview. Most of the jokes are just a restatement of the same two or three ideas. At times, Clown in a House is incredibly on the nose — like in one ending where the clown removes his face paint and leaves the house to work in an office cubicle.
So, despite its limited runtime of about three hours, Clown in a House is a bit of drag. It’s delightfully wry and deprecating but leaves a sour taste in the mouth. It’s a success in this regard because, after all, that’s the point. But you’ll likely get the point after a few yucks and about half of the game’s endings. There isn’t a reinventing of the wheel here either, though I’m not sure how you reinvent the point-and-click genre anyway. There are some minor horror elements, but not enough to classify it as scary.
Overall, it’s a hard game to recommend to just anyone. If you’re creative and love cynicism, then go for it. You could spend eight dollars on much worse things. But if you’re anyone else, then maybe don’t pick this one up. There isn’t enough going on to cement Clown in a House in the greatest hits of its genre, and you’ll probably leave it with a renewed sense of pity and dread.
The Final Word
A typical point-and-click with a whimsical narrator. Players beware: Clown in a House is somewhat depressing with an almost one-dimensional tone.
– MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average
