Sunshine Manor markets itself as an “8-bit blood-soaked Horror RPG that pits you as Ada,” a little Trick or Treater who must battle demons in a haunted house to rescue her two best friends, fellow Trick or Treaters who have been kidnapped by the evil spirit in control of the manor.

I say markets itself as, because Sunshine Manor has no RPG elements. There is no meaningful customization (there are masks, but they don’t change the gameplay much), there are no branching paths based upon actions you take (though there is a secret dog level) no RPG-style combat, nor are there other things which one typically associates with an RPG. Gameplay is minimal and consists mainly of Ada walking slowly throughout the mansion to find objects and click interact with NPC’s.

Now, Sunshine Manor doesn’t have to be an RPG. I actually like the gameplay style that we get with Sunshine Manor, and I very much enjoyed the vibes and art style of the manor. The map is pleasantly small and no details go to waste. Still, I wouldn’t call it an RPG, and I’m not sure why the developers felt the need to do this in the marketing. Simply calling it a narrative-exploration game would have been honest.

I like the missions in Sunshine Manor. Let’s be clear, nothing in this game is scary to people who have played horror games before. Most of it is family-friendly, despite the cool Halloween-inspired music riff in the main menu. This genre can best be described as “spoopy horror,” or ‘cozy horror”, though cozy is a term more used to describe books of this nature than games, while spoopy is for games.

There are lots of charming moments and characters in Sunshine Manor. My favorite is the Maid ghost, who has been imprisoned by a vain demon woman named Vestasia, who has imprisoned the Maid due to the Maid being prettier than her. The player then gets to have Ada conspire with the imprisoned Maid to make a dress so stylish that the demon will go into a frothing rage and attack you. Then you can beat her and free the innocent Maid.

Sunshine Manor’s biggest disappointment is the story. Or, more specifically, the ending and the lack of choice in regard to that ending. I am not someone who believes that every RPG needs multiple endings. Often, one good ending is preferable to multiple endings. Five Nights at Freddies Security Breach (to give an example off the top of my head) suffered due to the multiple endings because of the confusing of the lore.

So, if Sunshine Manor had a satisfactory ending, I would be okay with that being the only one players get. Instead, the ending of Sunshine Manor is the most incomplete ending to a game I’ve ever experienced. It leaves you utterly confused and feeling like you missed something. Worst of all, the game mechanics seem to imply you can earn a better ending, but this is just not true. Here is the context:

Remember from a few paragraphs ago when I mentioned the basic premise of Sunshine Manor is you’re a little girl Trick or Treating who embarks on an adventure to save her best friends, two more little girls who are Trick or Treating with you before they get kidnapped by the evil spirit in Sunshine Manor? Well, unfortunately, the game developers seem to have forgotten it! You don’t actually get to take ANY action to rescue your friends. It is impossible for you to rescue them. When the game ended with our heroine leaving the manor without them and not mentioning them again, I assumed I had gotten a bad ending. Little did I know there was only one ending.

The game arranges things, probably unintentionally, so that one might reasonably assume there are multiple endings depending on what one does while exploring the Manor. There are secret puzzles in different areas of the manor. There is even a secret level where you can play for a good dog.

There are these masks hidden within the manor that you can equip after you’ve found them and they have different abilities – such as shooting fire or being able to imitate the evil mascot bear from Camp Sunshine, the other game made by the people behind Sunshine Manor.

I assumed if I got every one of these masks that I would be able to affect the ending. So I went back and got every mask and solved the riddles…only to have the game remove all of my masks before the final sequences. I didn’t get them back. This was extremely frustrating. What was the point of earning all these masks that upgrade my capabilities only to have them removed when it really matters?

Sunshine Manor doesn’t completely forget about Ada’s friends. They do come in again for one brief scene where we see their eyes have turned pink due to demonic possession. Ada seems completely oblivious to the fact that they’re possessed, wondering if they have betrayed her, when it’s obvious to anyone else that they are not acting of their free will.

Ada is just a little child, so she can be forgiven for her mistake, but the fact that the developers never see fit to have Ada realize the truth is another annoying thing about the ending. Up until now, Sunshine Manor had been a cozy, humorous horror experience, so this downer ending completely clashes with the tone of Sunshine Manor.

Basically, the last that the friends are mentioned is when a wall of rocks falls between Ada and her friends and she decides to run away rather than continue trying to rescue them.

If this all sounds familiar to you, then you’ve probably experienced Hello Neighbor, the other indie horror game infamous for forgetting the main point of why people were playing. In Hello Neighbor, all the riddles the player solves is meant for the player to learn what the Neighbor is hiding in his basement, and to help them escape if they’re a trapped person.

In Sunshine Manor, you explore the manor and battle demons in order to save your friends. The comic tone and cozy vibes make a tragic ending inappropriate, but to add insult to injury, Sunshine Manor’s ending is so abrupt and non-conclusive to anything that it’s building up to that it’s not even clear if it tragic.

There is an ending cutscene where a grown-up Ada obsesses of trying to track down the cultists of Sunshine Manor (but no mention of rescuing her friends!) before bumping into the protagonist of Camp Sunshine. The developers probably meant for this to be a COOL Easter Egg that gets players gasping for joy at what comes next, but I didn’t care. The character from Camp Sunshine is not important to the story of Sunshine Manor, he’s not the one we needed to encounter. It’s Ada’s friends that needed to be in this scene.

Maybe the developers will fix the problem in the third Manor game, but that doesn’t change the damage that has been done to Sunshine Manor’s story arc. If this was a purely gameplay focused game with little story, then a bad story wouldn’t affect my rating very much. But considering that this is a very short couple hour long game with zero roleplay elements (despite marketing itself as an RPG) that relies heavily on its story…well, that’s more than enough to ensure I not recommend Sunshine Manor.

Sunshine Manor was reviewed on PC with a copy purchased by Niche Gamer. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here.