We have our beginning! Tabby awakes in her new home, not even fully unpacked yet, and it's immediately evident that things are not right. Mom is boarding up the door to her own bedroom, Melody has been struck with a severe case of angst, and Dad is nowhere to be seen...
As mentioned in the OP, each individual playthrough of House is very short, but incredibly dense. There's a lot to cover but little time to address it in the videos, so I can use these posts the expound upon things I can't really dilly-dally to explain in the videos. I'll spoiler certain parts I feel are more interesting to first learn about via the video.
From the moment Tabby wakes up, the clock is ticking. The day begins at 8:30 AM, and the intended end point is midnight. Naturally, the day runs MUCH faster that a real 24 hours. I'm not sure what the exact rate of minutes to a second is, but the day is roughly 4 minutes and 15 seconds of real time before Midnight hits. There is a lot to do in that little bit of time if you want to get some kind of ending, so you gotta move fast!
Additionally, THE CLOCK NEVER STOPS. Once Tabby is out of bed, the timer is always ticking, whether you're reading her journal, checking her inventory or talking to a character. You can absolutely die during dialogue or scripted sequences as everything else is moving on its own independent cycle. There is no way to pause, so be sure you can commit to the day when you hit continue!
Every character in the House is on a set cycle, always reaching the same point at the same time every day. If you want to get a better grasp of where you want to be and when, or if you want to know when certain parts of the House become dangerous, it's best to follow every character and make note of significant events and when they happen. In your inventory, you have a clock to see the current time!
If you are out of the room when Mom zombifies, she will begin to patrol the house, going between the kitchen, foyer and west wing. If she spots Tabby, she will rocket towards her and drag her towards the kitchen to do the kill we saw in the video. The only way you can avoid death Zombie Mom's hands if she spots you is having the Shotgun to shoot her with, as she is too fast to be hit with the Axe. One thing that's not commonly known, Mom will ONLY zombify if she dies via slipping in the kitchen. Any other death, should she die, avoids her zombie form entirely.
The Zombie Kitty can also appear in the Piano room and Tabby's room. If you approach him in these rooms you are practically guaranteed to die as there's no good angle to approach him before he lunges. Luckily, if the Kitty is in a room you need to search, you can leave and re-enter it to despawn him. It's best to just re-kill him in the Foyer though so you don't have to deal with him at all throughout the night
There are two other ways to deal with the Rat in the basement, firstly by just running past him which is actually important for one of the endings. I'll demonstrate the technique for doing so next time. The other method is completely unnecessary and after a point where it could be useful to do for the most part, but I'll show it off eventually also.
Once Midnight rolls around, Daddy will come home. Now most endings of the game don't actually force you to fight him, but the default ending where you save no one and essentially do nothing does force a battle on you. The only way you can kill him is with the bear trap and two shotgun shells. He cannot be engaged in melee with the axe as while he's slow, is kill has enormous reach and priority over your axe swings. Note you can use the bear trap in any door since Daddy will just beeline towards whatever room you're in when he arrives, but we may as well just take out his legs immediately.
If you used the Shotgun at all before Daddy arrives, then I hope you're set up for an ending where you don't have to fight him because there are only two shells in the whole game!
Marty the Snail is sort of an assist mode, albeit a minor one. He will increase your stamina by about 50%, which is more significant than you might expect, allowing your sprint to consistently dodge certain threats that otherwise require very good timing to juke. Should you reach an ending with Marty on your head, Dolly will insult you for doing it with his help, but you are not prohibited from completing the game with his help the whole way. To make things more interesting, I'll avoid using him, but do note that there is an achievement for completing the 5 mains endings of the game with and without Marty!
Time loop stories are among the few times you'll see meta-progression in a non-rougelike/lite game, but House 1 has very little of that actually. Aside from Marty, the only other major thing that happens from successive runs if you unlock the true ending by getting the 4 initially available endings. Beating the game with the True ending does have a couple more effects on successive playthroughs, but not anything that helps you. Actually one of the changes just makes the game harder, which we'll see soon enough.
