The House of Tesla

App Store Editors’ Notes

Another GREAT game, with a bit left to be desired.

I grew up on these kind of mystery games. Room 1, 2, 3 and old sins. Machinika museum and atlas. And of course the house of da Vinci trilogy. The puzzles are great and always fun to play around with. Also loved the historical aspect. This game matches that criteria and I LOVE it. There’s only one big problem and this could be because I’m on iPhone twelve but the character models for Tesla Twain and the other characters in the memory scenes are very low quality compared to your characters from house of davinci. No problem with them being static and not animated just could use a LOT more detail. Other than that though great game! I’m looking forward to more games from you guys in the future.

Port needs work. Not touch screen friendly.

I’m a big fan of the DaVinci games. So I was counting down the days for this release, but in its current state it’s difficult to play. The sensitivity/hit box for the touch actions are pretty bad. They mostly don’t work at all with the Apple Pencil, and are still very bad even using a finger (I’m on an iPad Pro). This would be somewhat tolerable and something I could kind of overlook except the interactions are very important to the puzzles. If you click something several times and there’s no action, you assume it’s not the correct solution. Not that there’s an interaction issue with the interface. For example, I’m outside of what looks like an office right now early in the game and there’s a circle of lights where you have to follow a pattern to unlock the door. I know the lights are supposed to be clickable bc the solution is obvious, but I’m having to click each light at least 2 to 3 times to get them to register the interaction. I will update my review if they fix the issue, but in its current state it’s very difficult to play.

Blue Brain lost its focus on this game

I think the peak of the games was Da Vinci 2. Solid puzzles, beautiful graphics, and great animations and story. Just brilliant. It was charming and engaging and balanced. Da Vinci 3 was just a tiny bit less great but still a very solid showing. Da Vinci was a rooms copy; fine enough but less refined with copy cat features. I have wanted harder puzzles from these types of games. Something that really makes you work to solve it. An “aha moment”. This game misses the mark and I think I know why. It wanted to be the most beautiful graphics maybe the best of the genre (they are fantastic); but it really lost sight of the main driver- great puzzles with great intuitive controls. I don’t like the multiple choices and the still frame animations. The dialogue is so much weaker than Da Vinci it actually feels like a whole new game staff. Porting backwards to phones hurt the design IMO. So many controls are hard to manage and as others have stated the puzzles aren’t hard just tedious. Finally i reported this but the audio bug; no sound works on the phone so i played the whole game in silence. Also i did not get credit for finding all the documents in the game. Also a bug. All is not lost; Tesla 2 should come out in a couple years and absolutely reclaim the title. Final thought. I like the idea of alternative endings and finding them all but The Room 3 did this the best so far. Actual changes to the outcome; not responses that did basically nothing to change the game history. My let down from fireproof was they never followed up with a world maze they showed in that last cut scene. A labyrinth is the best idea for a puzzle game like these… just saying.

A let down after the Da Vinci games

Some of the puzzles were very satisfying, but overall the game felt short and almost formulaic. It took me less than half the time than the first Da Vinci game did. The adaptation to iPhone screens was also pretty poor. For example the game with the cups ended up being just guessing because any visual clues were either missing or too small to make out. I can imagine it’s a challenge to program for such a small screen, but there should’ve been some sort of universal zoom in feature. Finally the electricity element was far less impactful and fun than the time and other elements in the Da Vinci games. It was hard to figure out the mechanics and then it did very little. All in all if Blue Brain Games does a second part of this series, I’ll buy and play it. But I’ll be doing that based on all the goodwill from the Da Vinci games rather than this one.

Nowhere near as good as the DaVinci series

I was so looking forward to playing this game on my IPad, but came away feeling “meh” about it. Certain scenes would freeze and not allow me to progress, even after quitting and resuming, which would take me right back to the frozen frame like a roadblock to moving on in the game. I actually had to restart the chapter after progressing quite a bit which was very frustrating. I even tried to just start the game from the beginning and the very first clue about turning on the desk lamp froze and I could not zoom out at all to continue the game. Very disappointing, especially when the DaVinci series was so breathtakingly beautiful to play.

Love the game

I played both version of House of Davinci and thought they were great puzzle games. The House of Tesla is shaping up to be a very similar experience, except for the fact that I am playing this one on my Mac and iPhone. The opening animations have some glitchyness on the Mac, not on the iPhone, but having no issues with actual game play. Worth the cost! I recommend!

Not iPhone friendly???

It seems clunky on my iPhone 16 Pro. The text is way too small, and everything is dark and hard to see unless you crank up the brightness on your phone. So far it doesn’t live up to the previous game.

So disappointed…was this made with GenAI?

I loved all the house of da Vinci games but this one is a pale shadow of those. The UI is finicky and doesn’t always log actions, the gameplay seems to work differently at different points in the game which makes it difficult to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing, the text is too small to read on a phone…it’s just very frustrating!