Please, Don’t Touch Anything: House Broken takes the solid foundation laid out by its predecessor and extrapolates it further with brand-new puzzles and a mixed reality mode that takes advantage of the Meta Quest 3.
For the uninitiated, both the original and Please, Don’t Touch Anything: House Broken are escape-room-like puzzle games that follow a similar setup: as the player, you’re left unattended with the allure of dangerous but shiny equipment in your periphery. Letting your intrusive thoughts win by pressing the big red shiny button kicks things off in each instance or play session.
Instead of different levels to play through, Please, Don’t Touch Anything: House Broken leaves things up to the player as they discover new solutions or means of mayhem that usually end with inadvertently ending the world or destroying your environment. I’m not the biggest fan of puzzle games, but House Broken is excellent because it encourages experimentation through its open-ended approach to gameplay.
“House Broken is excellent because it encourages experimentation through its open-ended approach to gameplay.”
Please, Don’t Touch Anything: House Broken’s open-ended gameplay lends itself to more genuine moments of eureka rather than relief from simply solving a progress-halting puzzle found in most other games.
Left with only a few items at your disposable, along with the big red button, which, when pressed, spews forth additional interactive buttons and leavers, forces creative thinking and a gradual sense of discovery as players find objects and clues, often hidden in plain sight to help them get to each of the games 15 unique endings.
Achieving any of the 15 endings in House Broken nets the player with a sticker that they can then place on the machine with the big red button in front of them, which not only is a cool way to track progress but feels very much like the virtual equivalent of decking out your PC or favourite gadget with art in real life.
“The simple novelty of having to physically inspect and move something in your hand in 3D space, which often leads to uncovering even more clues, feels organic and gives House Broken a refreshing sandbox feel.”
In terms of the actual puzzles themselves, House Broken usually boils down to having to press the big red button and other interactive objects in the environment a set number of times. The frequency in which you push or otherwise interact with said object ultimately dictates what ending you’ll get.
Objects in the game world include everything from mini chalkboards to giant Venus Flytraps that emerge from otherwise innocuous planters, UFOs and other surprises that I won’t spoil. The biggest draw and charm for me when playing House Broken is the ability to pick up or interact with everything that tends to trickle out as you experience the game.
The simple novelty of having to physically inspect and move something in your hand in 3D space, which often leads to uncovering even more clues, feels organic and gives House Broken a refreshing sandbox feel that alleviates the frustration usually attached to other puzzle-based titles.
Outside of the brand-new puzzles themselves, Please, Don’t Touch Anything: House Broken can be played in both virtual and mixed reality, which on the Quest 3 is the definitive way to experience the game. As the title may suggest, House Broken taps into Meta’s use of 3D mapping your play space to deliver an augmented experience that transforms your room into a precarious den of exploding walls, rooms that fill up with water and all manners of over-the-top experiences that take advantage of the Quest 3’s cameras.
Even without the mixed reality feature, Please, Don’t Touch Anything: House Broken is a fine VR game that takes the simple and innate desire of fiddling around with stuff and fully realizes its potential through virtual reality.
