Servant of the Lake is a premium entry in the Rusty Lake series from the studio behind Cube Escape, The Past Within and Underground Blossom. You start work as a servant in the Vanderboom house just as visitors are due to arrive, and every household chore turns into a puzzle. This page answers the common questions without spoiling solutions. The day by day guide and the achievement list are linked at the end.
1 What is Servant of the Lake
A single player point and click adventure. The store sets up the premise simply: welcome to the Vanderboom house, visitors are arriving soon, and your housekeeping duties start immediately. You solve puzzles to complete daily tasks, look after the household, make the visitors comfortable and help the family pursue their alchemical ambitions.
2 Where it sits in the series
The store describes it as a return to the roots of the series: a classic Rusty Lake adventure set in the Vanderboom house during the era of Aldous and William Vanderboom, with events taking place decades before Rusty Lake: Roots.
3 How the game is structured
The story covers a weekend, and the store asks whether you can survive it. Kotaku describes the Vanderboom siblings gathering at the house over three days. The official achievement list makes the structure explicit: every story achievement is tagged with a day and a time of day, running from the morning of day 1 to the night of day 3.
| Day | Time slots in the achievement list |
|---|---|
| Day 1 | Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night |
| Day 2 | Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night |
| Day 3 | Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night |
GameSpew adds that the days are divided into chapters titled after the servant tasks, such as preparing breakfast or cleaning. One achievement is tagged Secret Location rather than a time of day.
4 How hard are the puzzles
Moderate. GameSpew describes traditional point and click puzzles alongside sorting puzzles, sliding block puzzles and logic puzzles, with no frustrating difficulty spikes. Puzzles arrive quickly and keep coming throughout. Kotaku was less enthusiastic and pointed out that some puzzle ideas repeat, including three separate puzzles built around the same portraits.
5 Is there a hint system
GameSpew reports that the developer has placed an official video walkthrough in the game menu. That is not a gentle nudge system, it shows the solution, so treat it as a last resort if you want to keep the satisfaction of solving things yourself.
6 What reviewers said
On Steam it has drawn more than 7,000 reviews since its August release. The soundtrack is composed and performed by Victor Butzelaar, according to the store.
7 Requirements and languages
Very light. On Windows the minimum is Windows 10 or later, a 2.4 GHz dual core processor, 4 GB of memory and 1 GB of storage. A Mac version is listed, requiring macOS Big Sur or later and 2 GB of memory.
Twenty three languages are supported, including Japanese, Korean, both forms of Chinese, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, Turkish and several Nordic and Eastern European languages. Steam Cloud is supported. Controller support is not listed, which is normal for a point and click game.
Servant of the Lake is a single player Rusty Lake point and click adventure at a list price of USD 7.99, set in the Vanderboom house decades before Rusty Lake: Roots. It spans a three day weekend split into morning, afternoon, evening and night, takes three to five hours, and mixes classic, sorting, sliding and logic puzzles. It stands alone, includes an in menu video walkthrough, contains macabre body horror, runs on almost any PC or Mac, and supports twenty three languages.
Comment
No comments yet. Be the first to post one.