The Portal at Hill House
A downloadable game
You have heard of the house for many years, but never sought it out, assuming the endeavor wouldn’t be worth your time. Or worse yet that you would find exactly what you always feared.
Yet, something drew you towards its estate—a power, a thread dangling from the unwinding hem of a shirt, longing to be pulled. Reason and history warned you not to make the journey, not to cave to those newly-formed, yet eons-old, desires to seek out the house. However, now you are here...
The Portal at Hill House is a solitaire journaling game of cosmic horror that only requires the zine, paper, a six-sided die, and a deck of standard playing cards to play. On kickstarter in October of 2020, The Portal at Hill House is a 20-page RPG zine of cosmic horror.
Co-designed with Lindi Farris-Hill.
Go here to purchase a physical copy.
Grab the two player version, The Mirror in Hill House, here.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $5 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
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Community Copies
Are you experiencing economic hardship? Grab a community copy for free. No questions asked.
How do community copies get added?
- Every physical copy sold at presspot.games adds 1.
- Every $10 sold on itch adds 1.
Development log
- 2.0 EditionOct 07, 2020
Comments
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Thank you so much for offering the possibility to get community copies. As soon as I have stable finances again, I will pay for it !
No need, Lise!
Finances are tight right now, but I'm gonna keep my eyes open for Community Copies. As a budding designer, this would make for amazing research!
Just barely made it out in my first walk through!
Congrats!!
Halfway through a play-through of this, and I'm enjoying it as a sort of choose-your-own-adventure / writing prompt. Two comments though -
(1) It would be super helpful to include at least a brief description of what the 'ancient elements' refer to. I've had to do a lot of side-reading about alchemy to work out what my items actually are or could be. E.g. Antimony is a lustrous grey metalloid, also known as kohl. There's room for some great flavour-text there, and I presume the alchemical references are intentional, so it would be awesome to see them in the game text itself.
(2) Along the same lines, it might be useful to either genericise the Arcane Artefacts, or give something more about them. For example (and this was not in fact the item I rolled) Zj's Crest sounds very specific, like something I could draw into my journalling, but there is no mythological/historical/fictional reference (that I can find) for it, so I guess it's meant to be an in-game creative prompt? I would have preferred something like 'Crest of the Empty Ones' for that sort of prompt.
On my first play through, I managed to get out with my 3 items without getting sucked up into the portal. Will I be so lucky on my second try? I don't know, but I recommend this adventure!
Hi Travis,
I recently picked up a copy of this and played it.
I posted a few questions on RPGG (BGG - but for role players) in the forums here:
https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/329646/portal-hill-house-solo-rpg-cosmic-horror
Would you mind answering them please?
I also posted a favourable review that should be up soon.
Cheers,
Jack
Is there a way to get a print copy if you missed the Kickstarter?
You can order one a presspot.games!
This game is fantastic. It does a great job hitting the "cosmic horror" mood. All of the prompts give you just enough information to inspire you, while being vague enough to let you put your own creative twists on them. I'll absolutely play this game again!
Just played a game of this today. Very much enjoyed it!
A neat little game, I enjoyed journaling this one. Doing the place description was fun.
Thanks so much!