Raving Manor: Half Adventure Game, Half Graphic Novel

Half adventure game, half graphic novel, with a hint of horror movie thrown in, Raving Manor is a different kind of iPhone app.

The premise of the game is that you're on your way home from the airport, your car breaks down and you knock on the door of this old manor to see if you can get help.

Just like in many horror movies, the door opens, you go in, and it slams shut and locked behind you. Now you have to get out.

That's where you find yourself in an Icewind Dale-type game, except without any other players – no elves, faeries or the like. Just you and your wits. But you can take notes, pick up objects you find along the way and try to figure out how to get the heck outta there.

You can always go back to the map and see where you are and what's nearby:

Then you choose the room to go into and see what's there. Take the Game Room, on the west side of the Great Hall:

If you hit "Examine" you get to check out the pool table. There's a pool cue on it, and you can choose to pick it up and keep it. It goes into your inventory if you decide to do that.

Now, why would you choose to carry around a pool cue? Not sure, but it might come in handy. You're in an empty house that seems really creepy, after all.

You can only pick up so many items before your inventory fills up, however. Then, just like with any Baulder's Gate-type game, you have to decide what to keep and what to drop, if you simply must have the musty newspaper you find in the kitchen:

My favorite thing about the game, however, is the humor displayed by its creators. In the kitchen, for example, you'll find a piece of cheese. Pick it up to examine it, and this is the message you see:

C'mon, you know you giggled.

Possibly even better than the humor on display is the fact that you can cheat. Except it's not really cheating, because they're official hints from the official website for the game. You can go to iAdventuregame.com and check out clues. The clues are nice because they kind of tell you exactly what you need to know, but still make you work for it a little bit.

For example, if you want to figure out how to get to the second floor, you just type it in the search function on the site:

Then, you get a choice of hints:

Each hint comes with a spoiler alert and you have to click through to actually see any information, a nice last-ditch guard against your ruining the game for yourself.

In all, it's a fun diversion and costs just $1.99 in the app store.