The House of Correction announced

Raphael Gervaise of NotByDesign has emailed me to inform me of The House of Correction, a nonlinear tile-based first-person dungeon crawl with a horror theme and some quite nice-looking hand-drawn 2D graphics.

The premise:

A group of disparate companions are about to find themselves subject to the machinations of the mysterious House of Correction.

Faced with increasingly fiendish trials, seemingly designed to teach that the meaning of life is to die, and inmates whose derangement is matched only by the staff, you’ll need to utilize all your wits to help them overcome where countless others have failed.

But just who is setting the agenda in this insane bureaucracy? Have lunatics really taken over the asylum, is some more sinister force at work behind the scenes, or is this simply the correct level of therapy required for a return to civilised society?

The developers describe the game world as “unique” and “surreal,” and although I have little context to interpret its significance, I will say that I am definitely intrigued by the presence of unusual character stats like Ego.

According to the developers, The House of Correction features real-time combat, combat abilities that synergize well together, lots of weapons to discover, teleporters, illusionary walls, secret rooms, and other dungeon niceties.

Want to see more? Here’s a trailer for you:

You can also see a bunch of screenshots below (some of which mention an “insult skull”–that sounds a little familiar, doesn’t it?)

There is a free playable prototype of The House of Correction currently out for Windows; you can download that here if you want to get a taste for what they’re aiming at. (They also have an alternate version with AZERTY keyboard support.) The game has been in development since June of 2011, but the developers are quick to note that this prototype is mostly just a proof of concept.

If you like what you see / play, do feel free to head on over to their Greenlight page and give The House of Correction your upvote.