Affected: The Manor Review – Is it Scary?

A spooky VR haunted house experience

 Amanda BlainPosted:November 8, 2022
Updated: November 21, 2022

Let’s get started on this Affected The Manor Review.

What is Affected: The Manor?

Affected The Manor is a walkthrough VR haunted house-like experience. The controls are simple, there are no objects to find and no puzzles to solve, just lots of spooky situations and jump scares.

This experience is now a few years old, originally launching on Gear VR (but re-made for Quest 2), so does it still hold up to scare your socks off?

Who Makes Affected The Manor?

Affected The Manor is developed by Fallen Planet Studios. They are a developer from the UK. They have worked with many other companies on VR experiences.

Affected: The Manor is their first game.

Which VR Headsets is Affected The Manor On?

You can play Affected The Manor on Steam VR, Viveport, PlayStationVR, Oculus Rift, and Meta Quest 2. Yup, everything.

Affected: The Manor Review Experience

Affected: The Manor is a beautiful-looking VR horror experience. You will walk through some spooky locations without much interaction with things and see how well you do.  No controls beyond basic walking, picking up a flashlight, and interacting with doors means this is almost like a 360-degree video. Things will happen around you pretty frequently and keep you on edge.

Affected The Manor Tutorial

There is a brief tutorial available from the main menu area. Because the controls are extremely simple in Affected, you could easily skip the tutorial and start up the main experience. Having a tutorial here is great for brand-new VR users who would like to feel a little more comfortable.

The tutorial goes over the basics of moments, interaction with objects with the red symbol on them, pushing buttons, and how to open doors. This is pretty much all you will be doing in the game.

This is not a Game…

Overall it needs to be stressed here, this is an EXPERIENCE. Similar to Richie’s Plank Experience, Affected is marketed in the same “thing to show people new to VR” genre and is a great thing to pull out when your friends pop over to try VR for the first time. Anyone—from your grandma to your best FPS gaming friend—can put this on and get jump scared and freaked out in front of everyone because of the simple controls and minimal ‘gaming’ necessary.

There are 3 different experiences included :

• Original Manor Experience
• The Gauntlet
• The Darkness

Original Manor Experience

As mentioned this experience has its roots in a Gear VR experience. Affected: The Manor has therefore gone through quite a few different rounds and changes before the current Quest 2 VR experience. Overall, this is a straightforward spooky walkthrough. You will use a flashlight for most of the experience to add to the creepy effect. There are also lots of Achievements to get as you move through the house, some will be obvious, like completing a level, and others will require a little more luck or exploration on your part to get.

The Gauntlet

The Gauntlet is very viewable off to the side of the main lobby. With a slightly different take on the spooky walkthrough, The Gauntlet brings a tiny bit of gameplay into the experience. You will be required to move as quickly as possible through the Gauntlet run. As you push your controller forward you will move increasingly faster. That is until you hit something. Lots of “somethings” will be flying in front of you.  Your once-clear path will quickly fill up with obstacles and scares. The time will be ticking and once you reach the end you will get your score. Easy and fun to pass the headset back and forth to compete against your friends.

The Darkness

The Darkness is slightly more difficult to enter in the main menu area. Although the wall area looks interesting, you need to grab the candle to start this one, which can be a little more confusing than walking through the door like the other ones. This is another Walkthrough experience that you guessed it, is significantly darker. You only have a small hand-held candle to guide you. You will be facing some pretty big “dark-type fears”. Overall you will see a bunch of similar locations to the main experience, but quite a few new and unique ones too. This one has a distinctly more “witches, devils” vibe to it.

Is Affected: The Manor Scary?

It should be noted that this is a typical, horror, jump scare experience. There will be pretty much constant jump scares presented as you travel through the halls of the manor. Some will be more effective than others. There are also several common horror themes that you will be presented with like Evil Dolls, Twisting Passages, and Haunted Paintings. There is no real gore, but lots of uncomfortable and spooky scenes.

There are a few jump-scare moments where something jumps right onto your face and you would be hard-pressed to find someone who does not let out a yelp when this happens. There is no way to avoid these things, and nothing to fight back with which leads to an unsettling experience.

There were several event-trigger moments that happened while I was looking in a different direction. I could see some “aftermath” of whatever had fallen or the door swung open, but was looking a completely different way (usually at some sound) and missed the effect completely. This happened quite a few times for me.

You are walking through a haunted house and things will come at you. Experienced VR users might be accustomed to this kind of experience and not find much more here than a few brief moments. New users are more likely to be quite scared.

Of course, horror is a strange and particular thing, so one thing that is nothing to one maybe be extremely scary to another. As someone who has reviewed a lot of VR horror games, I found Affected to cause me to scream a few times, but the majority of the experience was just entertaining, and spooky, and made me smirk when something eerie happened.

Overall, Affected: The Manor’s entire purpose is to be scary. If jump scares, haunted houses, and dark corners are the type of thing that gets to you, you can expect quite a bit of fear and scary here.

Affected The Manor Graphics and Sound

The graphics in-game on the Quest 2 are quite impressive. The developers have done some interesting things with light to make this experience look particularly haunting. There are a lot of shaders for something on Quest 2 as well. Even statues and items that you can not interact with will still have some decent spooky shadows going on. There will be stuff on the floor, counters, and tables. Because a good portion of the game is in the dark with only a flashlight, it is a lot easier to hide the flaws perhaps. Either way, I think its one of the more impressive graphic experiences on the Quest 2.

Sound comes from a 3D environment, so you frequently hear things from behind or beside you. Quite a few times the sound spooked me more than what I was seeing. You will hear a wide range of audio cues from haunting orchestral background music to super creepy children laughing, and random knocking on doors.

Affected The Manor Bugs

No Bugs to report.

Affected The Manor Really Cool Stuff

There are quite a few moments where something will actually jump ON you and attach right to your face. I think for pretty much everyone this will be a solid jump-scare moment.

Who Will Enjoy Playing Affected: The Manor?

How long is Affected The Manor?

This is one of the downsides of Affected. All 3 experiences can be played in roughly an hour. You may wish to play some of them more than once, but beyond the Gauntlet, there is not much replayability in the Walkthrough experiences.

This is one of those games that is great to bring out to show new users to VR if they can get past the movement ok.

Can you play Affected The Manor Sitting Down?

Yes! Affected The Manor can be played sitting down. You can also play it standing. You do not need a large play space or room movement.

Does Affected The Manor cause motion sickness?

Affected The Manor has in-game movement. In fact, that is ALL you do in this game.

You can adjust the settings to use free-movement, snap turning, or free-motion turning. Adjust these settings if you feel any uncomfortable motion sickness feelings. There are a few moments in the game where everything will turn quite topsy turney. I imagine most users may have a few moments of unsettledness when this happens. It is pretty short though. The rest of the game plays smoothly with the available settings.

Affected The Manor is Intense for Motion Sickness but most users comfortable with in-game movement will be fine when using in-game settings.

Final Thoughts On Affected The Manor Review. Is Affected The Manor Worth It?

Yes Affected the Manor is Worth it.