How To Play

[superjamie]

#4905

== Getting the Game ==

Hugo’s House of Horrors can be downloaded from Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/hugos_house_of_horrors_12s

== DOSBox ==

You can run in DOSBox by starting HHH.EXE

== ScummVM ==

You can also play the game in ScummVM which gives you mouse control to walk around, and also highlights items as you mouse over them which is a nice addition.

https://www.scummvm.org/downloads

Click “Add Game” and select the directory with the game files.

If you want to get back to the ScummVM menu, press Ctrl+F5.

More here:

https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Hugo’s_House_of_Horrors

https://docs.scummvm.org/en/latest/use_scummvm/keyboard_shortcuts.html

== Playing==

Press Esc to skip the opening credits and start the game.

Press F1 for help.

Exit the game with the QUIT command.

Hugo’s House has you walking around with the arrow keys and typing instructions into the bottom of the screen, like the early Sierra AGI games (King’s Quest, Larry, Space Quest, etc).

The parser is fairly simple, it mostly uses two or three words like GET ITEM or LOOK ITEM, though there is one part where you have to TELL a character to do something or GIVE something to someone else. Using just LOOK will describe the current screen.

The game runs at 320×200 in EGA 16-color, but monitors had 4:3 non-square pixels.

I use DOSBox Staging and these work for me:

– output = openglnb
– aspect = true

To get accurate scaling in ScummVM, these work for me:

– Graphics Mode: default
– Render Mode: default
– Stretch Mode: Fit to Window
– Aspect Ratio Correction: off
– Fullscreen Mode: On

The game has PC speaker sound only, no Adlib or Sound Blaster. Even then there’s almost no sound anyway.

== Help! I’m Stuck! ==

From other reviews of this game, there are a few key points where people get stuck:

– I can’t get in the front door
– The dog always eats me
– What is the old man asking me?

Here are some non-spoiler hints for the first two:

– I can’t get in the front door –

Everything you need is right in front of you. What’s that on the ground? Could you look at it more closely?

– The dog always eats me –

The dog eats you, it probably just wants food. Is there another tasty treat which could distract it?

Warning: Once you solve this, you might only have one chance to be in this room with the dog not eating you. Don’t leave the room by the way you came. I think this only applies to some versions of the game?

The following image is here to break up the post and avoid spoilers. After this image, there are plain solutions for the above items and the post ends.

– I can’t get in the front door –

GET PUMPKIN, OPEN PUMPKIN, GET KEY, UNLOCK DOOR, OPEN DOOR

– The dog always eats me –

Get the CHOP from the butler, then before you enter the dog’s room type THROW CHOP but don’t press enter. Walk into the room and press enter straight away.

– What is the old man asking me? –

Unfortunately these are (almost all) things you just need to know.

1) The Hobbit hero is BILBO
2) Aslan lives in NARNIA
3) Count Dracula was invented by BRAM STOKER
4) A pan-galactic gargle blaster is C
5) The only mammal that can’t fly that can fly is MAN
6) Roy Rogers’ dog is BULLET
7) YES (there are actually two different questions here, depending on whether you have the shareware or registered version, but both take YES as the correct answer.)