Today, we’re sharing our impressions on Sunshine Manor, an indie game developed by Fossil Games and published by Hound Picked Games. The title was released on October 6th for Xbox consoles, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. And is already available on Steam.
In Sunshine Manor, we play as a young girl named Ada McReady who is challenged to enter a haunted house known as Sunshine Manor. This eerie house was once the manor of Mr. Atkins, a showman who sold his soul for fame and glory. The house also served as the setting for mysterious and bloody homicides.
Ada enters the manor with her two friends, Betty and Wendy, who are kidnapped by a shadowy figure, leaving Ada alone and frightened. This is where our adventure begins.
Sunshine Manor: a multi-dimensional mansion
Along with an alone and scared, Ada, we begin our journey in this eerie house. We discover that Ada possess psychic powers capable of repelling the creepy creatures in the manor.
A friendly ghost appears and informs us that several souls are trapped in this house by demons. Our mission is to locate and free these souls, find Ada’s friends, and escape the house.
So, we initiate our exploration of this strange and shadowy house, and we stumble upon the ghost of the house’s chef. Upon realizing his spectral state, he transports us to another dimension to assist him.
The other side is a gruesome and very peculiar place, where a gluttonous demon craves a large amount of food. We manage to defeat him only through a clever exploit. In this place, we come across a dog that accompanies us from this point forward.
Once we free the chef, we return to our dimension to find the other ghosts in the house. We discover that each ghost was murdered in this house and their souls are trapped in different dimensions that reflect their jobs or personalities. In each of these places, there is a boss who has trapped the unfortunate soul.
Fight or Flight
In Sunshine Manor, our only weapon is the ability to create a psychic circle around us, this circle is capable to banish the monsters that inhabit the house. Additionally, we can use our psychic power to dash and thus, swiftly evade the monsters.
The core gameplay involves seeking out each ghost in the normal dimension and then assisting them to escape and pass on by defeating the boss. Each boss has its own personality that is tailored to the setting of the level.
The house remains the same except for some spheres that emit a light which drains our psychic bar increasing the challenge when we encounter the shadowy figure. The other dimensions are always different, becoming increasingly tricky and difficult.
Save us!
Sunshine Manor is a retro top-down adventure game that draws inspiration from ’80s horror movies and features 8-bit pixel art graphics. We played it on the Xbox Series S, and the graphics were clean, polished, and highly immersive. The combination of visual design and sound effectively maintains a constant state of tension.
The controls are straightforward, although they occasionally exhibit slight imprecision. The scarcity of save game points enhances the difficulty level, and the absence of checkpoints requires careful navigation through certain passages. However, this isn’t a significant issue.
The real problem with the save games arises when attempting to use them; extreme caution is necessary to avoid accidentally quitting the game and losing progress. A quit confirmation would indeed be a welcome addition.
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