Servant of the Lake combines the mundane with general oddness to great effect

If you've ever had the privilege of chatting with an ardent Rusty Lake fan, you'll know they're a passionate bunch who believe their beloved puzzler series is largely underappreciated on a grander scale. I've always found the enthusiasm infectious and decided it was high time I dived in myself. And what better place to start than the upcoming Servant of the Lake?

At the beginning, some might say, but the newest and shiniest is always going to grab my attention over anything else. So, I headed to Steam - it is coming to mobile, though, fear not - and downloaded the demo. A mere 20-ish minutes later, I came away excited to dive into the full game when it arrives in August and will probably check out the back catalogue while I wait.

The demo opens with a horse-drawn carriage approaching the Vaderdoom estate as the coachman warns you that working for the family is exhausting. Given that he sounds pretty knackered himself, I'm inclined to agree. He also warns that while you've been hired as a housekeeper, and only for a mere three days, your duties will extend beyond regular chores into things 'nobody talks about.' With that ominous warning hanging in the air, it's time to step out of the carriage.

From there, the point-and-click puzzling begins. The first task is to pay the coachman for his services and feed his noble steed. Apparently, you don't carry cash. Although, why would you when coins can be snagged from cups so long as a multi-step puzzle is completed first? It doesn't matter that one of those cups required to find the solution is found on the carriage; that's exactly what we want from a point-and-click adventure. If something can be done simply, I simply want no part in it.

Flash from the past

However, while solving the puzzles might not be straightforward in terms of the number of steps, they're rarely that difficult. In part, that's helped by the visual design, which gives me nostalgic pangs for escape room games from the Flash era. Unlike some point-and-clicks, the scenes aren't overly cluttered, meaning there is no pixel hunting here. It's obvious quite quickly what you can and can't interact with. This immediately makes Servant of the Lake a heck of a lot more accessible than many of its peers. That might be a negative for some. For me, it's a huge plus.

It means the goal is always clear and that everything on show is relevant to the current conundrum. If a cat is sitting on a chair, feeding it a dead mouse is only going to give you an object that'll be useful now rather than much later. If a crow is chilling in its nest on the windowsill that caws whenever it's clicked, it's important for feeding Mr Aldous. Nothing is purely set dressing. Whether that remains true in the full version remains to be seen, but the early signs are good.

Everything's just a little off... for the better

Another aspect of Servant of the Lake that's endeared it to me is the atmosphere. Everything is just calmly bizarre. I appreciate that sounds like an oxymoron, but bear with me. After waking up Mr Aldous, he asks for a shave. Doing so results in his earlobe getting lopped off. He's only mildly perturbed about this and cares not one jot when his missing body part is fed to the aforementioned crow. Likewise, he's seemingly only concerned that the creepy crawly burrowing around in his porridge is alive. Once it's been squished, he wolfs it down quite happily.

Alongside being generally odd, I found it an interesting mix of unsettling and amusing. Undoubtedly, there are darker elements at play here. Alchemy has been mentioned a few times, and we all know that never goes well. Perhaps Mr Aldous can regrow ears with his concoctions, rendering the loss of his body parts a mere inconvenience. Or maybe he's secretly seething and is now plotting his revenge against me. Either way, the off-kilter tone is a winner. I'm intrigued to find out where it all leads.

The mobile of it all

To address the other bug in the porridge, I played the demo on PC. Naturally, that tells us little about how Servant of the Lake performs on mobile. With that said, given how clean the UI is, I'm not particularly concerned about misclicks. In fact, the drag-and-drop nature of a point-and-click means it'll likely feel even better with touchscreen controls, particularly when sliding open curtains or signing names on contracts. It's that extra sense of involvement touch brings that simply can't be matched by a mouse.

Plus, this is not Rusty Lake's first mobile rodeo. The team has released games on the platform before, with each entry usually well received. As such, I'm fairly certain that trend will continue come August.