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"H.H. Holmes meets Dungeon Keeper & Oxygen Not Included." An OCD-fulfilling base builder with an art style that brims with eerie personality. Prepare to micromanage!

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➥ NOTE: Patches are incoming to begin addressing common issues.
* 1st patch deployed 5/21
* 2nd patch deployed 5/25
* 3rd patch deployed 6/11
* 4th patch deployed 6/23
* 5th patch deployed 7/26

☑ Content is a value at full price.
☐ Positive experience, but wait to buy when it's on sale.
☐ Negative experience. Wait for improvements before buying.
☐ Very negative experience. Save your money.

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If you've played games like Dungeon Keeper, Oxygen Not Included, Rimworld, Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation, Fallout Shelter, etc, or if you are a serial killer like H.H. Holmes, who built a hotel of death in real life, you will note many familarities in gameplay and hit the ground running. MachiaVillain's spin on the base building management genre is that you must establish your base as a haunted house and lure victims into it for traps, jump scares, and murder. You will have to abide by the parameters that the League of MachiaVillain community places on you, which ultimately comes down to some generalized horror movie rules. Some examples of these rules are, "Kill the virgin last," "Do NOT kill the dog. EVER," "Kill them only when they are alone," and "Kill them at night." It's important to note that cleaning up after your kills is conducive to maintaining a properly run murder house and low suspicion level.

To ensure that you are equipped for success, you are provided with a menu of primary actions that branches out into diverse sub-menus loaded with minion commands, gathering prioritization, structural components, craftable items, decorations, utility, storage, business functions, marketing, laboratory, researchables, crypt management, monster recruiting, and more. Additionally, you have ingame access to archived tasks, events, and instruction, as well as League rules, rank tracking, startup guide, and access to the MachiaVillain Wiki site.

You will have a variety of monster minions to pick from initially (you begin with your choice of three), or if you are not satisfied with the selection's ability and personality statistics, you can reroll for a new lineup. Additional minion slots are unlocked as you rank up. They can be assigned multiple tasks at once, with the number of simultaneously allowable tasks based on their limitations or bonuses (like Brain Excrescence, which adds +2 jobs for that minion). Their individual tasks include Building, Chopping Wood, Mining, Collecting Plants, Maintenance, Storing Resources, Extinguishing Fires, and Refilling. Room tasks include Factory, Home Office, Kitchen, Laboratory, and Training. Their loyalty rating will determine how well they listen to you when it starts to hit the fan. They will also encounter hazards and dangerous creatures when they are out and about running their errands and fighting will be a viable option...if they have the skills, stats, and resistances to do so. Be mindful that they are always well-rested and well-fed (like me).

Obviously, with a game so finely detailed and encyclopedic, this wall of text barely scratches the surface of the varied sandbox experiences you will encounter, but you get the gist. The convergence of your efficiency, planning, design, marketing, minion attributes, environment, hazards, job assignments, etc, plus randomized circumstances, will create some wildly diverse and memorable magic moments. At full price, there's a lot of bang for your buck here.

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Trackable Resources:
Gatherable resources - Wood, stone, metal, and plants
Food - Bones, smoked meat, and smoked brains
Additional items - Gold coins, gold nuggets, and healing potions

Crypt monsters initially available:
Zombie, Mummy, Skeleton, & Psycopath

Unlockable crypt monsters:
Werewolf, Dracula, Toxin Master, Frankenstein's Monster, Pumpkin Head, Medusa, Dr. Frankenstein, Tire (yep, w/ psychic powers even!), & Clown

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+ Manage a murder mansion & crypt to lure unsuspecting victims into a creatively designed demise just like H.H. Holmes![maskofreason.wordpress.com] :P
+ Darkly comedic presentation. Murder is fun!
+ Feeds my OCD.
+ Mad scientist lab.
+ Option to speed up time.
+ Swimming pool w/ a shark.
+ A crypt w/ unlockable monsters.
+ LOVE the cute & spooky theme.
+ Random sandboxy magic moments.
+ The "sketchy" artwork is cool as hell.
+ Sound design is mischievous & whimsical.
+ Suspicion meter adds a neat layer to gameplay.
+ Mouseover descriptions for just about everything.
+ I enjoy watching & listening to how busy all the little minions are.
+ Lots of options for customizing, building & decorating your mansion.

~/= More simplified than Rimworld. Also, no story generation element.
~/= Annoying pause screen vignetting effects that can be toggled off in the settings.

- Gathering gets grindy.
- Voice acting is kind of "meh"
- Some bad grammar & broken English.
- Some critical items are costly to make.
- Combat & targeting can be frustrating.
- I like the geeky humor, but some of it falls flat.
- Not many keybindings beyond camera control.
- White text on light beige background is washed out.
- It can be too "micromanagey," like Oxygen Not Included was.
- Several bugs got through. ▶ Some have been gamebreaking for other players.
- Yellow text is hard to see w/ illustrated backdrops. Needs a prominent drop shadow or wider text border (or both).

H.H. Holmes was the original murder mansion base builder. He would have loved this game.

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@ShesLevel18
Curator: She said she's level 18 🤘

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