An Homage to Hugo's House of Horrors (Haiku & Sketch)

Kelsey Thomas
Oct 25, 2023
1 min read

The best haunted house

is Hugo's House of Horrors -

pure 90s delight

I took some creative liberties with today's theme, because when I picture any haunted house, it will forever look like the original Hugo's House of Horrors exterior to me. I truly credit this game (a text parser-based adventure from 1990) as shaping my childhood and creating the spooky/Halloween-loving person I am today. I still replay Hugo every few years and it brings me such delight. Please tell me I'm not the only one out there who remembers this epic masterpiece of a game. The title screen song was playing on a constant loop in my head while I drew this rendition of the original pixel art (below for reference). *I will give bonus points to anyone who can tell me/ remembers how to unlock the door to this house.*

Original game screenshot:

A screenshot from the game Hugo's House of Horrors depicting a haunted house in front of a full moon with a character walking near the house in front of a fence

2 Comments

hil hoover

Oct 29, 2023

OH MY GOSH! What a wild nostalgia trip! I didn't realize that still lived in my head until I saw these images!!! And that's wild, because I'm the person with memory loss who had to look up my own address three times today for filling out forms and sometimes forgets my own actual name. Was this the one where you had to do something with the pumpkin???

Kelsey Thomas

Oct 29, 2023

Replying to

YES!!! The key was inside the pumpkin, and I think I usually just typed something like "smash pumpkin" which made the key appear, but I think just "look inside pumpkin" would do it too. I really need to replay all the Hugo games again. I usually wait a few years between playing so I mostly forget all of the puzzles and mystery and can enjoy it thoroughly again.