The Coast House

The Coast House
by Stephen Newton and Dan Newton

2001

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Reviews and Ratings

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Number of Ratings: 6
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1-7 of 7

- Edo, May 15, 2022

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

All in all, a fairly solid piece of work if not for the simple lack of basic proofreading. Somebody needs to pick this game up and beat the errors out of it like dust out of an old rug. Once this happens, The Coast House will become a nicely atmospheric piece of IF.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

A competent TADS game about finding your past in an old town, July 16, 2017

by MathBrush
Related reviews: 15-30 minutes

I like the atmosphere in this game. You're in a town on the Gulf Coast, exploring a town and an old wharf.

The game isn't large, so it doesn't take too long to finish. But it could be much better-clued. Without clues, this game is like playing monopoly for the first time without instructions.

There was one action required at the end that I found unusually gruesome, but somewhat logical in hindsight.

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- Egas, August 6, 2013

- DJ (Olalla, Washington), May 9, 2013

- MKrone (Harsleben), February 19, 2012

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

Memories, seaweed and shrimp boats, January 15, 2010

by Pete Gardner (Vancouver, Canada)

The goal of The Coast House is unclear, but the atmosphere is good. This is a mystery that follows the player as he searches the home of his late grandmother and retired grandfather for clues to...something. Just what he is searching for is unclear. All he knows is that his grandfather suggested that there was something back at the old unused house in the town of Dalton on the coast of Texas that would be of interest to him. And there we have it.

The puzzles in The Coast House are relatively easy, and the game is quite forgiving. You don’t die, at least not that I’ve experienced. The prose has a few grammatical errors, but not enough to really disturb me. I found the lack of a clear goal a bit confusing, as I had no real direction to follow. It was largely a matter of going through the usual paces of exploring the map, examining everything, trying to use things together to achieve a simple result, and maybe something will happen to move the plot along. Had the game been a bit longer I would likely have given up, not really feeling driven to accomplish anything.

What causes The Coast House to stand out is the effective atmosphere generated by the prose. I’ve never been to the east coast of Texas, and especially not to Dalton, but I now feel as though I would recognize it if I did. Great attention has been given to detail, generating feelings of nostalgia and loss. That is quite an accomplishment for such a short game, and it is clear that Dalton, or a town much like it, is close to the heart of the author(s).

Having said all that, would I recommend The Coast House? Only if you are looking for decent example of atmosphere. Apart from that, the events were really quite ordinary and after finishing the game I thought to myself, “Well, that was nice.” But that was it. No wow factor for me.