Let me preface this by saying I hate onions. The reason is because I can taste things. That said, I don't hate when onions are in the title of a game, for example, Cheese & Onion, a fairly recent home-brew game for the VIC-20/VIC-1001, and this game, Onion House.

But just because I like a title well enough, doesn't mean that I know how to play it. You play a little onion creature who walks around a kind of maze with quite a few screens. You pick up objects, and I have been able to cause interaction between the objects and the environment a few times, so I guess you must use them in the right way to solve puzzles. There are also some action sequences where you have to avoid enemies that move around on the screen.

I think, in fact, the game is kind of complex. You don't just move and pick up objects, there are other commands you have to enter by keyboard, "move" is just one mode of the game. This might call for actually reading the manual.

Do you see that oniony hero(ine)? Well you won't see him on the PC-6001 version. The PC-6001 version uses a default "human" glyph that is used in some games where the programmers didn't want to make their own graphics, or the software publishers didn't want to pay graphic artists. The PC-8801 version is, by comparison, vibrant and full of life, and one effect is that the game title actually makes some sense.

The box art is really what intrigued me most about this game, so when I got the PC-6001 version, it was a bit of a let-down. I mean, PC-6001 was never the most graphically-capable machine, but the difference was pretty striking. When I came across the PC-8801 version, I didn't have a lot of expectations, but this certainly is a big improvement. I decided to sell my PC-6001 version and stick with this one. Box art is the same, though.