Z’s Reviews > The Staircase in the Woods > Status Update

TLDR;

This is a dark take on “if your friend jumped off a bridge, would you?” Meets the Goonies (and let’s be honest, some IT woven in ) in a true crime documentary-themed backrooms DLC.

4.5* (needed some trimming) round to 5

+gory room descriptions
+def got me hooked in beginning
+Sephiroth reference
+Pantera reference while we’re at it!
+Lore’s narcissism seemed a litttttle over the top, I did appreciate her inner monologue saying why do I have to be the strong one, swallow my suffering while others get to wallow
-It wasn’t explicit but I don’t like any SA content
-repetition could have been trimmed down
-didn’t care for Lore/Owen tbh

I really enjoyed this, it had some real dark and I mean DARK parts to it, but I was in it for the long haul. The beginning really got me intrigued and the writing style was to my taste. Without our trauma, what is left of us? Found family, guilt, regret, self-loathing, and some choice trigger warnings later and I found myself wanting to finish this, find out the mystery!

They hired PI to find a Matthew, they’re not sure how to feel if he got out and never contacted them if he still had the house w him (6 college girls went missing in the area) and he has no family. They don’t know what will happen, how much is Matty how much is house (L even brought a gun jic), could they save him or would they have to burn it down? No matter what they would invoke the Covenant and they went together

Thru Nick, the house talks and the Covenant reminisce on all the times Nick was a wildcard devil-may-care wackadoo that brought them laughs and then Nick uses his lighter on the man and they escape the house, not sure if it escaped them, though.

6 months later, O/L together and working on their game, H confronted his wife and is working on his marriage and N seeing a therapist. All of them have nightmares

They kept going down until they touched grass (lol) in front of a small house. A man-like creature sat in a chair w his wife and 2 kids. He said welcome back to N. House agrees they can leave if it keeps N They disagree and house says they tried to take down M but he wouldn’t break even w images of his over-bearing parents, blood gore murders and what it chose eventually was to show them his friends who abandoned him

Author makes a poignant remark that once this was said he fell catatonic, if the house was holding him up what would be left of Nick if it left? How much of us are summations of our trauma and the aftermath of how we deal w it. Without it, who are we now?

“The heart is where the home is” they must find the original house inside the house, they follow the pipes. Down. It's painfully hot and they land on a staircase

They attack him and to get it all to stop, O yells that Matty is alive (he doesn’t know for sure but when the house entered him as he was wounded he started to know the house and it’s knowledge) they drag N to the crawlspace and O says that he knows what his dad did to him and it wasn’t his fault and they’re sorry for not realizing his pain. He was in the house and the house was in him.

If they couldn’t save Matty then they’ll save Nick. He went after Matty alone last time and they dk how much of his actions this time around were the house or actually him. They left messages of love throughout the house for Nick to find

The house still gets to them slowly and they are beginning to hate each other. Nick walks in

O thinks the house needed him, urgently. He feels that if he lets it in, it’ll let him out. It doesn’t hate him. He knows the next room will be w his father who says he hate him. O says I hate you too.

L/H dragged O into the crawlspace he was bleeding from biting his fingers.

Nick came in alone and it got him. Finding Matty was the final straw. But this time they weren’t alone when they entered.