What do you get when you combine the dysfunctional family from Knives Out with a mansion creepy enough to be the setting of a Resident Evil game and wrap it all up in an illustrated point-and-click game with incredible—and often unsettling—artwork? You get Servant of the Lake, the latest entry in the Rusty Lake series that came out on August 13! This is a puzzle game about becoming a servant for a family with some dark secrets. You might think you have some inkling of what that might entail, but no, trust me, you haven’t gone dark enough. To make it through, all you have to do is last three days obeying their every whim. There’s also a maid who works there who is kind enough to show you the ropes, so it’s not even a one-person job. It should be easy enough to feed the family, dress them, hunt with them, hunt them, and pick bullets out of their wounds. Pretty standard servant tasks, I think.
The puzzles are distinctly imaginative and use some very creative logic. Often, in order to find a number combination for a safe or uncover a key to a door, you’ll take a rather winding walk to the answer. Occam’s razor has no place here. Get your thinking caps on and put on some hiking shoes for these. For example, in order to get matches to light the stove, you have to pick up the dead mouse from the downstairs hallway and give it to the cat in the main foyer so it will stop sitting on the matchbox. You can see the logic, but the mental journeys you go on to solve these puzzles can be long and winding; you might spend fifteen minutes solving a straight-up escape room in order to unlock a single box and recover the shaving razor in it. Because Aldous has to shave. Duh. Why is it in the most complicated box in the world? For fun. Welcome to Rusty Lake, servant.
As a note that I do think is worth sharing: I spent way too long on the above paragraph trying to use examples that aren’t utterly disgusting. The game is designed to make you squeamish—after all, it deals with the occult. But I have settled on some tame examples for the purpose of a public review. For those who are squeamish, you might want to read some spoilers to find out what exactly you’re in for. The gore is all cartoony and unrealistic, but it’s sometimes a lot. The game is not horror, but it sure is…yucky. I could classify the flavor of darkness and creepiness as gothic or dark magical realism, though there’s also some (distinctly cartoonish) body horror. I’m a big fan of magical realism and occult storylines, which Servant of the Lake pulls off perfectly. If this sounds good to you, play this game immediately! If this is off-putting in any way, then this is definitely not the game for you.
One of my favorite parts of the game is the sound design. I especially want to highlight the simplistic but visceral flute riffs that play at the beginning of each mini chapter. They’re only a few seconds long, but they set the scene perfectly. If the flute does a charming little trill, you know it’s a relatively peaceful section. If the flute sounds like it’s channeling the voice of Zuul (one of my favorite techniques to do as a classically trained flutist myself), you know you’re in for some weird Stephen King shenanigans. AH, it’s so good! All the music is nice and simple but utterly delicious, and the sound effects are a gorgeously delightful foil to the illustrated storybook visuals. The game is also fully voice-acted, which really makes the characters and their emotions—and motives—shine brightly.
I really enjoyed the pacing. The main story is 4-5 hours long, so something you can see through fully in one or two sittings. It takes place over three in-game days, which are divided into morning, afternoon, evening, and the night watch. Each time segment quite literally opens new doors, so you have a different combination of rooms to work in. Every time segment calls for a slightly different mode of thinking and general puzzle solving—just enough to keep things fresh, but not so different that you get frustrated. It feels like how the light changes throughout the day.
I was never confused about what time period I was in or what was expected of me. The implicit instructions were very intuitive. Just click around, wandering through open doors, until you find the maid and ask her for your task; it’ll be pretty self-explanatory from there. Plus, there’s an in-game journal that helps you keep track of written hints you’ve found! This was one of my favorite quality-of-life details.
I dislike when detective/puzzle games make me either write down everything in a physical journal or move my character back to the area to read, say, graffiti on a wall again. The in-game journal just documented all the written stuff seamlessly for review. In-game objects were either interactable in a clear way, or they would be picked up and put in your inventory, which was always visible on the right side of the screen so you couldn’t possibly forget about the bottle of water or pair of scissors you were carrying that would solve the next puzzle. The UI was simple but perfectly effective.
I was mildly stumped by puzzles a handful of times (I don’t consider myself a puzzle-head, but I do enjoy them, and I’m usually not averse to peeking at a guide). Taking a breath and a break would usually be the key to finding the answer. I only relied on a guide once, and in retrospect, I do think I would have gotten there with some more time and consideration. So, this game is definitely accessible to anyone, not just players who are especially into puzzle and detective games. I would classify it more as a point-and-click visual novel with heavy puzzle elements.
The game is only 4-5 hours long, as noted earlier. I did not get 100% of the achievements, but I did finish the storyline. There is a sort of new game+ after the credits in which you can jump around in chapters and do the secret puzzles to finish off any missing achievements. I’m not an achievement chaser, so I plan to give that a pass, though there are a few specific ones that I feel like I was close to and just didn’t quite get at the time, so maybe I’ll be lured back in for those. I’m content with “only” finishing the story.
Accessibility-wise, there are individual volume sliders for music, SFX, and dialogue. There are tons of languages. If you need a hint, they have an official walkthrough, which they link in the game menu. That’s really it. The voice acting matches the written dialogue exactly. One tricky thing that’s part of the whole modus operandi of the game is that there are no UI highlights over interactable objects. It’s up to you to look and click around to find out what’s useful and usable.
