Uninvited
System: NES
Release Date: June 1991
Developer: Kemco
Publisher: Kemco*Seika
Genre: Adventure
Stumble your way through a haunted mansion and watch your back because you’re Uninvited! Uninvited is the third in the MacVenture trilogy and plays exactly the same as Shadowgate and Deja Vu. I am not as attached to Uninvited as I am to the other two. In fact, I really disliked this game as a kid because of the damn Ruby that kills you after you take it. It doesn’t do it instantly, so I didn’t put two and two together until reading about it in Nintendo Power or EGM or something. But I came here with the intent to solve the mystery. The last thing you remember, a shadowy figure suddenly appeared in your headlights. You awaken crashed into a tree and your sister is nowhere to be found. What’s that smell… gas! Can you escape your immediate plight and reunite with your sister? Or will the mansion in front of you be your demise?
Examining scenes, picking up and using items, and finding clues for what to do next is the gameplay loop here. Though there are hints, some of them are obtuse. There are a number of logical leaps you need to take involving a lot of trial and error. There are also dozens of items and you’ve been trained by the other games to pick everything up because they are useful. Most everything in this mansion is just inventory clutter. The mansion and its surroundings consist of about 40 screens and a number of them will kill you if you do the wrong thing. In fact, here’s a song about it.
Sit in a fiery explosion
Become a prisoner in another dimension
Get ripped apart by a skeleton
Drink down a vial of poison
Dumb ways to die
So many dumb ways to die
You’re going to di-hi-hi
Uninvited’s going to make you die
Forget to put on your water wings
Ignore a bunch of stern warnings
Big puppies ripping out your throat
Fall down a pit cause you think you can float
Dumb ways to die
So many dumb ways to die
You’re going to di-hi-hi
Uninvited’s going to make you die
Take a cursed item you haven’t bought
Get mauled by creatures in a vicious onslaught
Take a long nap in a stone coffin
Be locked in a cage you shouldn’t have been in
Play with an axe and be made real sad
Hesitate when you need to kill the big bad.
Eat the fruit and speed up the passage of time
Death by spider is so sublime
The dumbest ways to die
So many dumb ways to die
You’re going to di-hi-hi
Uninvited’s going to make you die
Yeah, there are a lot of ways to die. If you do pick up that ruby, make sure to leave it in the backyard. That breaks the curse and allows you to continue. Like Shadowgate and Deja Vu, of which there are a couple references to lightly hidden, the adventure can be completed pretty quickly once you know what to do, like twenty minutes tops. So pop it in once, beat it, and then move to something better.
Graphics: 2.5
The scenes are nicely depicted, but the animations are pretty lame.
Sound: 2.5
The music invokes a horror mood to be sure.
Gameplay: 2.0
We’re back to point and click. There really isn’t much use of the different verbs, but you need to make sure to open most things.
Difficulty: 1.5
I think there’s more leaps in logic than I prefer.
Fun Factor: 1.5
I didn’t have as much fun with this one, but that might be because I came into it with a negative feeling from the past.
Overall Rating: 2.0
Uninvited earns a C. It’s a fine adventure, but not a great one or one I’d ever like to play again.