The town Newcam, Massachusetts, 1924. On the outskirts of the town stands the Weathertop mansion. It was just an ordinary place until the last owner, Benedict Weathertop, started practicing black magic. He killed his parents and populated the mansion with all kinds of undead. Since then, nobody dared to approach the mansion. But a short while ago, two boys were found dead near this horrible place. Apparently, the boys had tried to enter the mansion. Another evidence pointed out that a girl followed them – but her body hasn’t been found yet, and there is a slight hope she might be alive. This is where you, the hero of the game, decide to investigate the mystery, and to venture into the mansion…
Players must first put together a team of four willing to venture into the mansion with them. This can be done either by creating characters from scratch or by hiring villagers. The characters will all fall into one of the following classes; dilettantes (no special abilities), detectives (melee fighters who can use firearms), mediums (magic users with the ability to fight ghosts), scientists (can use machine techniques), and journalists (camera wielders who can take pictures of the monsters, that can be sold to a newspaper to earn money).
The town of Newcam has a weapon shop and item shop. The weapon shop sells melee weapons like knives and firearms that require ammo cartridges. It is also worth noting that weapons can deteriorate through use, so bringing multiple weapons is essential for survival. The item shop sells things like medicine, lamps, and items for specific character classes. Other than these shops, Newcam also has a tavern where villagers can be recruited, beers can be guzzled, and blackjack can be played (ages 18 and over only for those last two activities), a library that provide tips on how to earn money, a fortune teller that allows the player to use earned experience points to level up their characters, and a monastery where the wounded or gone insane may be cured.
Once the player has recruited a party and handled there business in town they now can enter the mansion. The mansion is explored in first person as in a typical dungeon crawler. The rooms of the mansion have items such as furniture, closets, wall portraits, etc… that can be examined and possibly moved or opened. Doing this can reveal things like notes or hidden passages.
The mansion is infested with monsters that are classed as either corporeal and incorporeal. This is important to understand as only certain classes can inflict damage depending on the monsters class. Monsters can also be talked to with the possibility of either receiving intel or avoiding to have to fight them if successful. If forced to fight a monsters in a turn based battle, players have to watch out for both their health and mental health. While losing health will kill a character, losing their mental health will cause a character to go insane. Mental health can also go down if the character experiences a fright in the mansion, such as. looking at a cursed painting. If all of the player’s characters die the game will erase the player’s saved game, thus forcing the player to restart the game from scratch.
After its original PC-8801 release the game was ported to the MSX with partially redrawn graphics and slightly re-arranged music. The Sharp X68000 port features a lot more of a graphical upgrade with the backgrounds, corridors. monsters, and character portraits all being redrawn. More changes were done to the music and mouse support was added which introduced a point & click interface.
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