Servant of the Lake review

• Reviews by Daniel Yam
• Published:

The latest surreal addition to the popular Rusty Lake series works well in every respect

There’s something strange about the Vanderbooms; you just can’t put your finger on what it is. Aldous, your new employer and the one living in the Vanderboom family home, is a quiet and reserved man, the polar opposite of his brother William, who clambers in through windows and always has a drink nearby. Then there’s Alexandra, who has left the maid so horrified of her that she only refers to Alexandra in a hushed whisper. What’s going on with this family? Even the coach driver who brought you here wished you luck before departing, as if expecting you to need it. No matter – you’re only manservant here for the weekend. What could possibly happen in three days?

Servant of the Lake is the newest addition to the ever-expanding Rusty Lake saga. Taking place before the events of Rusty Lake: Roots, the game centres around the first generation of Vanderbooms over the course of one weekend as the three siblings meet at their family home for their annual reunion. The eerie atmosphere and odd characters, combined with progressively more challenging puzzles and a story that expands further on the mystical origins of the Rusty Lake world, make for a very enjoyable experience that will provide some answers but leave you wanting to know even more about the mystery surrounding this highly unusual family.

You, the unseen protagonist, have been hired by Aldous Vanderboom, the eldest of the trio, but your employment is only for the weekend, Friday to Sunday, to help with preparations for the yearly gathering. As the siblings arrive and get settled in, William, Aldous’s younger brother, gives you a directive: investigate the attic and basement, looking for evidence of “the Elixir.” It’s an alchemical mixture rumoured to grant immortality to those who drink it, whose existence William is convinced is being kept hidden by Aldous. Before long, what starts out with the suspicious commands of a disgruntled brother quickly spirals into a much larger web of secrets and conspiracies as each sibling’s own ulterior motives are revealed.

While Servant of the Lake fits into the larger tapestry of Rusty Lake lore, its story can be enjoyed as a self-contained experience of a newly hired manservant’s harrowing weekend at the Vanderboom Estate. The narrative is one of the strongest aspects here, quickly taking a turn for the dark as each sibling tasks you with duties that can only be described as strange and borderline criminal in some cases. The game is broken down into levels, each one framed by one of the many tasks you must perform. Some are routine – welcoming the arrivals, preparing dinner, drawing a bath – while others are… more personal requests like exploring the basement in the middle of the night, or finding a way to break into the attic. Ordinary tasks for a manservant.

Each character is fully voiced and adds to the game's eerie vibe. The player character doesn’t talk, but everyone else speaks curt, snippy lines in hushed tones while still being clearly distinct from each other. The relationship between the three siblings is hinted at within their dialogue to you as their servant, each thinking the other two are out to get them and making more and more outrageous demands as time goes on. What could they be so agitated about? If you know Rusty Lake and its ongoing saga, you'll already suspect it’s something alchemical and magical in nature, but the specifics are for you to discover over the course of the weekend.

Visually, Servant of the Lake maintains the same slideshow art style as all of the Dutch developer’s games, retaining the classic hand-drawn graphics that call back to their Flash game roots. Artist Johan Scherft’s painted landscapes provide picturesque backdrops seen through windows and balconies, which contrast well with life within the Vanderboom family home. While the grounds outside are quite expansive, the house itself is uninviting and cramped, a palette of greys, muted olive greens and browns filling each room with a sinister vibe. Even the live-in maid looks visibly affected; never smiling, eye bags heavy. The Vanderboom Estate does not give off good energy.

Servant of the Lake

Genre:	Mystery
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D, Slideshow
Theme:	Surreal, Animal
Perspective:	First-Person
Graphic Style:	Stylized
Gameplay:	Puzzle, Fetch Quest
Control:	Point-and-click
Game Length:	Short (1-5 hours)
Difficulty:	Medium

As is typical for the series, the viewscreen is presented within a large box with rounded corners, reminiscent of an old analogue television or a camera lens, with the inventory displayed down the black border on the right side of the screen. Progressively stranger sights, like a severed hand poking out of a bathtub or a tiny corrupted soul in the shape of a black faceless figure hatching from an egg to be devoured as part of a meal, don’t feel so out of place given the somewhat cartoony aesthetic. They’re eerie and surreal without being overtly frightening.

That being said, there are a few jump scares made even more jarring by their startling sound effects. But even in between, the game’s audio helps create an atmosphere that is downright creepy and unsettling. A harp, flutes, and piano play gentle, soothing melodies that give way to an uneasy vibe as the sun sets on the estate and the music abruptly stops. Ambient effects of wood creaking and water dripping in the dead silence of night make for an incredibly disturbing feeling as you navigate your way around before retiring to bed. Music also serves as a minor character theme, with a harp introducing Alexandra when she first arrives before she plays one herself later on in the dining room.

Interaction is all done with a simple left-click, and although there’s no hotspot indicator of any kind, the rooms aren’t cluttered and relevant objects are all clearly visible. The puzzles are well-designed and almost all inventory-based, with no need to combine items, making for a very straightforward control scheme. There are a few instances of manipulating the environment directly, such as raising a flag to alert the coach driver and blowing up a wall in an underground cave. You’ll encounter some other types of puzzles as well, mainly involving combination locks, including a very involved section spent deciphering alchemical symbols.

The puzzles get progressively more challenging, either in the number of steps needed to solve them, or because the story gets more bizarre, leading to more unorthodox solutions. Nevertheless, the logic behind them is always decipherable no matter how surreal things get, and I always understood what I had to do to progress, even if it took some thought to figure out how. One such puzzle occurred towards the end when investigating an underground part of the house, where I was only allowed to take three items from a box with nine possible options. Each item enables progress in certain parts of the level, but experimentation is required in order to figure out which combinations of objects can be used to clear a path through to the next area.

Along with your assigned task, each level also has an optional mini-objective to clear, so there’s even more puzzling to be done. There’s a clue to what it might be from the level select screen, and some are silly, like getting Aldous stuck while stretching. Others are more serious and relate to the deeper plot of the game, though not mandatory to complete, such as following shadowy figures skulking about in the background and peering through keyholes. There’s no hint system in Servant of the Lake, but a link to a developer video walkthrough is accessible from the help menu if you find yourself stuck. While the offer of assistance is always appreciated, bear in mind it can potentially reveal unwanted spoilers accidentally.

It took me about four hours to complete the main story, but that’s not the end as it goes even deeper with a post-game sequence. Starting off with a single scrap of a cryptic message, this second quest takes you back through the various levels to find the remaining pieces of the tale using alternate solutions. The puzzles themselves remain unchanged, as you are effectively replaying them, but performing different actions or entering different combinations will result in something new happening, like a wall panel opening to reveal a hidden clue. This is genuinely one of the coolest things I’ve seen in an adventure game, and the additional lore uncovered will leave series fans even more satisfied. For franchise newcomers, it’s almost like a hard mode version of the game that tests you to use the various items and solve puzzles in alternate ways. A win all around for everyone.

Final Verdict

Servant of the Lake is another welcome addition to the developer’s consistently strong body of work, with a gripping story, intensely eerie atmosphere, and progressively harder puzzles, just as we’ve come to expect. Add to that one of the finest post-game experiences in the genre or indeed all of gaming, with ongoing ramifications for the larger Rusty Lake storyline, and whatever your expectations or experience coming in, this game delivers on all fronts.

Daniel played Servant of the Lake on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher.