Hugo's House of Horrors

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A short adventure game from 1990. You play Hugo in a quest to rescue your girlfriend from a house inhabited by monsters. Followed up by two sequels, Whodunnit? and Jungle of Doom, and the basic premise was retooled as a Wolfenstein 3D clone called Nitemare 3D in 1994.

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This game provides examples of:

• Adventure Game
• Angry Guard Dog
• Arc Number: 333 is the solution to the combination lock in the first game and part of the phone number to dial in the second. Trying it on a safe later in the second game will just result in the game mocking you for thinking that would work again.
  • It also appears again in Nitemare 3D.
• Behind the Black: A puzzle to cross an impassible chasm is to walk along the pixel-sized ledge that is not described in the room description, and not visible on-screen.
• Cutting the Knot: In Hugo 2, you encounter the old man again and it looks like he's going to be asking you a bunch of stupid questions again. Instead, Penelope just knocks him out and continues on.
• The Dev Team Thinks of Everything:
  • Try throwing those matches across the bridge in the second game.
  • Or kissing the French Maid.
  • Try typing "fuck" in the first.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Quite bizarrely, Hugo was the most popular character on Irish language children's television for many years under the name of Húidí, even releasing some charity singles. Not just a cartoon either, as an actual presenter via very rudimentary preset animations. Weirder still: the video games were an almost completely unknown commodity, and these days the broadcaster (originally named Tna G but since rebranded to TG 4) seems to be pretending he never happened.
• Heroes Want Redheads
• Jungle Japes - The third game takes place there, where you must save Penelope from a poisonous demise.
• Let's Play: Pushing Up Roses and her companion Paw Dugan tackle this adventure with innuendoes all around!
  • There's also a hilarious one by Yahtzee Croshaw and his partner (not gay) Gabriel.
• Locked Door - A couple.
• Mad Scientist
• Misplaced Wildlife: In the third game, the South American jungle has elephants, hyenas, and suspiciously African-looking natives.
• Monster Mash - Several monsters appear in the first game, most of which are having dinner.
• Red Herring - Lampshaded every time.
  • In the second game, the final bits of evidence are red herrings based on Cliches. You instead have to locate the character without the cliché motive.
• Schmuck Bait - When you pick up the whistle in the first game, the game asks, "I wonder what the whistle does?" But if you blow it right away and go into the next room, you get killed by the dog. However, the whistle actually does have an important, positive use in the game.
• Shout Out - The old man in the basement/cave asks you several questions relating to Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy. Thankfully if you never saw them, then the help text will tell you the answers.
  • The opening theme music is a mishmash of both the "Dragnet March" and the synthesizer lick from Boz Scaggs' "Lido Shuffle."
  • In the sequel Hugo's girlfriend Penelope saves The Doctor from a Dalek, confusing the hell out of a lot of stateside players who didn't get the BBC America channel (in fact, a few strategy guides treat it as a Big Lipped Alligator Moment).
• Trial and Error Gameplay - Typically for its genre and era, experimenting with items has a very high probability of resulting in death.
• Unwinnable By Design - in the second game, woe betide you if you get those matches wet when they accidently drop into the water. The solution is to drop the matches, pick them up, drop them again, pick them up again...
• We Were Rehearsing a Play: In the second game, when describing a certain event.
• You Can't Get Ye Flask - Parodied:

->open bolt Please say "undo bolt".

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