Parents' Guide to The Addams Family: Mystery Mansion

The city building sim game where players create a virtual ant farm and watch the inhabitants go about their business isn't fun if the characters aren't interesting enough to watch. Well, it's hard to get a more interesting cast of characters than the stars of The Addams Family: Mystery Mansion. The warped sense of dark humor is just a treat to be a part of, and it's a blast to create your own not-so-little house of horrors for the Addams to relish. The game's art style follows the recent animated feature film, which itself takes its cue from the original classic comic strip. The visuals are clean, detailed, and smooth, bringing a special sort of life to the Addams' macabre charm.

It's fun to see how the characters interact not only with the home you build for them, but how they interact with each other as well. As strange as they may seem to outsiders, the Addams are a close-knit family with a lot of acceptance and genuine love for each other, and it shows. Admittedly, one horror the Addams Family couldn't have planned for is the free-to-play pitfall of microtransactions. As with most games of this genre, there's a constant push to convince players to buy extra in-game currency or special bundles (usually with some unique decoration piece) via the in-game store. This can get a touch pricey, even with just the occasional purchase. But the game's use of these ads is a lot less invasive than many similar titles. And while it takes a bit of time to build up the mansion enough to keep a steady stream of interactions going at a given time, The Addams Family: Mystery Mansion is one haunted house you'll be sure to visit time and time again.