I bought this game a few years ago and have been itching for time to actually play it. This year I talked my group into a Halloween one-shot and we all loved it. We've tried other games for horror one-shots over the years and have never quite been satisifed with them. Character creation is easy - figure out an generic horror archetype/stereotype for your character based on the scenario, name 3 traits and give them bonuses, then pick a gear item. Done! You have a character in 5 minutes or so that you can invest in for a couple of hours and enjoy their eventual horrific demise instead of feeling like you wasted time generating stats and picking skills that didn't matter. (Or just use one of the many pre-generated characters in the books for the included scenarios - they're a pretty good selection of horror tropes already).

My players were a bit skeptical of the blackjack mechanic at first but once things got rolling everyone got into it (we had to find an online tabletop to have a deck of cards since we play virtually, but there are a number of them around these days). The card mechanic defnitely helped with creating a sense of tension around resolution that dice don't as the players had to choose to take cards or not - making it a choice instead of just random chance really helped with the feeling of having characters in a horror movie instead of an adventure game and helped set the tone of the whole game.

For a game that required nearly no prep work on my end (mostly thinking up the bones of a scenario and getting the rules straight to be able to explain to my players). It definitely requires some improv skills on the GM's part - the game gives good ideas for each room as you generate the House but weaving them into the ongoing story can require some quick thinking - and our scenario ended up like a goofy B-movie rather than truly horrific (but that may just be the group's preferences). Overall this is an A+ game and I can't wait to get a chance to do a one-shot of the follow-up game Starship Infernum and see how it works with horror in space.

I prepped and ran this just the other night. The group had a great time.

I would say that, as simple as the game actually is, I had to do more prep than I should have had to because the actual editing isn't very strong. References to rules are made in a sort of scattershot at times and things like the lists of Rooms and Obstacles aren't cross-referenced with the page-numbers containing their descriptions. Another idea would be to make a kind of flow-chart for the various results a Survival Test can have instead of bullet lists that don't 'flow'.

The black jack resolution mechanic is a little weird at first but it's such a universally known game that the group really latched on to it quickly.

Another review referenced the art being a bit cartoony and I'd agree, though that's not really a big problem.

Purgatory House is an excellent example of simple idea turned into an entertaining game. It pits a group of investigators/survivors against a house that is clearly there just to torment them. The gaming mechanics are kept simple by design so that Purgatory House works as a pick-up-and-play kind of game.

The essence of the book are the random locations of the House. They are vividly described giving the GM not only a fun game to run but a toolbox to be used in any kind of game where haunted house is needed.

As constructive criticism goes I think the game could have used a bit more coherent editing and maybe not so cartoonish illustrations. These both are minor details and do not hinder the actual gaming experience in any way.

To summarize - I really liked how this game takes a simple premis of a horror story and gives you the tools to run a quick game as effortlessly as possible. You do not even need maps for the house (and I would actually advise you against them). A solid gaming book.