Hellebore House Playtest

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Welcome

Hellebore House is currently a massive work in progress, and you have stumbled upon the first of many secret playtests for it. A playtest for a book? In this case, absolutely. Read on if you would like to participate.

An Introduction to the Book

Hellebore House is a puzzle book, an immersive puzzle, or a paper dungeon. You could even call it a labyrinth comic, or a choose-your-own-adventure. To be honest, the terms for this type of book are underdeveloped. There is a room on every page, and in that room are doors. Those doors are labeled with page numbers, that take you to the next room.

Hellebore House is heavily inspired by the book "MAZE: Solve The World's Most Challenging Puzzle" by Christopher Manson. Published in the late 80's, right before the huge boom of point and click adventures for early home computers. The interactivity that point-and-clicks enabled, made video games a natural evolution for the idea. And with the recent meteoric rise of knowledge-checkpoint games like Outer Wilds, Tunic, or even Breath of the Wild, it felt like the perfect time to bring 50 years of video game puzzle history back to its progenitor, the paper book. Hellebore House has locks blocking your path, keys to unlock paths forward, knowledge checkpoints to test your knowledge and murder mysteries to solve.

This is made for you if you love the games Myst, Blue Prince, Encarta's Mind Maze, Submachine, Outer Wilds, Tunic, or Return of the Obra Dinn. Or, if you are a fan of the books Journal 29, Paper Labyrinth, Cain's Jawbone, The Eqyptian Jukebox, Daedalian Depths, or the Librarian's Almanaq. Or of course, Christopher Manson's Maze.

Playtest Instructions

Start in Room 01, the Foyer. From there, you can enter any room with a number associated with it, and go through the door to the corresponding page. You can do that easily through the links below the page, or by using the page select to manually go to the correct page. If you reach a room with no exits, you must start over. You cannot go back to rooms you came from unless there is a door in the current room leading there. Some doors are one-way only. You can ignore any of the elements within the filigree, they will be filled with puzzles that are excluded for this playtest.

If you so choose to take on the challenge, your goal is simple:

Find the shortest path from Room 01, to Room 31. You should be able to make it by going through ten total doors.

Once you have your answer, write in through the Google Form. All playtesters will be included in the Playtesting section of the book's credits, As a small thank you for your time.