The Pope of 1-bit Mystery Games is back with an exclusive Halloween treat: A haunted house you can play right in your browser

Lucas Pope, the developer of instant classics Return of the Obra Dinn, and Papers, Please, has just created the first LCD game for... decades? Except for the other LCD-based game he created last year to celebrate Papers, Please’s 10th anniversary. Pope has two games under his belt and I'm ready crown him the leading authority in modern browser games that are designed to mimic toys that run on 40-year old 4-bit microcontrollers.

If you grew-up in the '80s and '90s you'll remember the cheap "electronic" games like Nintendo's Game & Watch or Tiger handheld versions of movies like Batman and Robin and The Terminator. These liquid crystal displays did not use addressable pixels but instead lit up pre-drawn sections of artwork in order to create the illusion that they were moving. They also had shrill sound effects such as beeps and booops. Most of them were terrible.

Lucas Pope created one of these as a surprise for Halloween, and you can now play it in your browser. It's not bad! Moida Mansion, Pope's "electronic fluid crystal game", is no exception. It does a lot of things with little, transforming a few simple button inputs into an amazingly clever little riff about escape rooms.

You and your friends went to Moida Mansion, (a place where reportedly moida occurs) in search of their pet turtle, and got locked into secret rooms, chests and wardrobes by a monster. You have to go from one room to another looking for them. The search button allows you to cycle through the objects in a room to search. This can reveal useful items like a key or secret code. You'll also attract the attention of the monster if you search, so it's best to move on to another room.

Moida Mansion isn't very challenging. As soon as you realize that you have to run between two and three rooms to avoid the monster, you won't die. The layout of the mansion is random each time you play. Finding clues in every room feels like a fun 1-bit escape room with more beeping. I played the game a few times and was amazed by the variety of puzzles, given the simple controls. On my second run, I had to gather all my friends, then find four small buttons scattered around the mansion. I left one friend at each location to press these buttons simultaneously, in order to rescue our poor turtle. To find the code to unlock a chest, I had to follow a ghost through several rooms until it led to a bed that had the code hidden in the sheets.

I've got to say, Ace is not my favorite Adventure Club member. Both times I saved my friend Bek, Bek had something useful to offer me -- like a clue to where to find Ace or the key to unlock a locked door. Ace? He says, "Let's leave!" If you listen to him you'll end up leaving Dot your turtle behind. Ace, this is not Coward's Club. Don't be afraid of a little moda.

Moida Mansion, a cute little game for the browser, would also be perfect on Playdate thanks to its single action button. I hope Pope plans a port post-Halloween.

There is one thing missing, however: A public shame mechanism, such as tweeting a Wordle Score of only gray squares to call yourself out if, for example, you leave Moida Mansion before rescuing Dot. No corner of the Internet should be safe from half-hearted adventurers.