REVIEW: ‘House of Hikmah’ Beautifully Encapsulates Islamic Scholarship Through Gaming

Bayt Al-Hikmah, or the House of Wisdom, was the acclaimed grand library and scholarly center of Abbasid era Baghdad, circa the late 700s-early 800s. The epicenter of learning and historic record for the Islamic world in Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA), the House of Hikmah was an acclaimed repository of record and learning whose influence reverberated far beyond the borders of its caliphate and to today, even after its tragic destruction during the Mongols’ siege of Baghdad in 1258.

Its memory and impact persevere strongly, especially in the superb new puzzle game House of Hikmah from Lunacy Studios, in which modern-day players can explore the House of Wisdom and submerge themselves into its architecture, atmosphere of learning, and meet and speak with the most famous academics of the Islamic Golden Age. 

Playing as Maya, the daughter of a scholar who has recently passed away, players will go on a journey rooted in real-world history with a splash of mysticism and magical realism. House of Hikmah isn’t attempting to do an exact replica of antiquity, and it’s all the better for it.

House of Hikmah brings players on an emotional journey through antiquity. 

This gives a soft time-travel mechanic for players to meet famous figures from across the Islamic Golden Age, explaining that the House of Wisdom has rooms that serve as portals to these scholars’ time and place. It’s an effective mechanic that keeps the world rooted in the real history of Baghdad whilst enabling a more fantastical experience. 

Figures like Fatima al-Fihriya, the legendary founder who founded the University of al-Qarawiyyin, in 857-859 AD, in Fez, Morocco, the Syrian Mariam al-Astrulabi, the fabled Shia scholar, alchemist, and purported writer of the the Jabarian Corpus, Jabir Ibn Hayyan, Ibn Sina the father of medicine, and others are your guides throughout the game, giving players insights into their accomplishments in chemistry, religious philosophy, academia, and more.

They are fleshed-out characters with wit, emotion, and intrigue that’ll keep you engaged in every conversation. With the inclusion of a figure like Ibn Hayyan, the game affirms that even if his real-world presence is debated, it doesn’t matter, because House of Hikmah is an unadulterated celebration of the collection of Islamic scholarship, wherever they’re from and whatever their Sunni or Shia background, making for an immensely refreshing framework of storytelling. 

House of Hikmah honors the women of the Islamic Golden Age through gaming. 

By highlighting famous women scholars in particular, the game emphasizes that throughout most of Islamic and SWANA history, including today, there are areas of academic and research advancement across a range of disciplines. They are doctors, chemists, mathematicians, engineers, and more. While of course women in many SWANA countries still face systemic barriers and harms due to patriarchal structures, conflict, genocide, economic sanctions, and religious fundamentalism, their immense resilience and prowess are deliberately ignored by the Orientalist gaze of Western intervention.

That gaze is used to justify horrific military interventions that simply make things worse for women,in the region, along with everyone else. But seeing and experiencing  House of Hikmah highlight SWANA and Muslim women as the proud scholars they are is an exceedingly welcome departure from what they’re usually afforded in Western media. 

Alchemy, a real discipline in the ancient Islamic world, is integral to the gameplay of House of Hikmah, as it is vital to navigating your environment and enabling Maya to solve puzzles and advance the story. As you progress through the story, you gain new abilities and access to different elements, such as metal and ether, to change objects and carry them through your play. While the movement mechanisms may be a bit janky at times, they don’t take away from the fun you’ll have figuring out the environmental puzzles. 

Puzzles are the core of House of Hikmah. 

Each of the scholars’ rooms is a puzzle you must solve. The answers to the puzzles aren’t immediately obvious, requiring you at times to try different applications of alchemy on key objects and navigate them through certain levels and platforms. Through your puzzle-solving and alchemical prowess, along with the constant interactions with famous scholars, the House of Hikmah engages your gaming mind to make you feel like a scholar yourself. 

You need to use your alchemy for platforming, changing midair objects to be heavier to sink or lighter to rise for your immediate goals. The mechanics feel tactile while you use your power, matching the realism of the narrative to your gameplay even as you are in a supernatural setting.

As a magical realist experience should achieve, it feels matter-of-fact as you go about your journey, transmuting the environment of the scholarly house and its various rooms to your needs. Moving the real-world-inspired structures immerses you further in the world, making it feel all the more real and connecting you to its real-life inspirations. Every movement in every room is crucial to achieving this effect. 

The environments are beautifully alive in Lunacy Studios’ debut game. 

It’s wonderful to have a main character like Maya, whom we rarely see as a main in Arab or other SWANA set games, let alone western gaming period. Visually, an Arab girl with brown skin, dark braided hair, and story-wise a reluctant disposition that grows into determination and intrigue, Lunacy has set a new bar for representation of SWANA peoples that remains sorely lacking in video games and other popular media.

The architecture of the House of Wisdom and its rooms is mesmerizing, with vibrant blues, copper, alabaster, and other design features, such as the octogram, that you might find in mosques or other Islamic-era buildings. 

Overall, the game is so vibrant with color, reflecting its real-world inspirations to recreate the House of Wisdom, building upon other efforts we’ve seen in the Ubisoft game  Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Using a magical realist template, we enter fantastical rooms like al-Astrulabi’s office, which is literally a giant astrolabe, and present it as no big deal as you jump and glide through the structure. What is much more intentionally profound is the wisdom you receive in the dialogue with al-Astrulabi and other scholars.

The lovely music caps off the immersion into ancient Baghdad, incorporating the traditional oud with soft orchestra, giving us what resembles a classical Iraqi soundtrack to accompany your journey. 

This game is a universal celebration of history. 

Playing the game as a Kurdish-Iraqi American feels so healing. House of Hikmah provides the same release as when I visited  Middle East Books here in DC for the first time, surrounded by all the scholarship of our region. Being able to traverse the academic history of our region in this game takes it a step further and sets the stage for more gaming and other media going forward.

Western countries deliberately under teach this history of the SWANA region, so as to continue justifying colonialism against it. With more narratives like House of Hikmah, players can recover and celebrate that history. 

House of Hikmah is a mesmeric, stirring, and engaging puzzle game through the Islamic scholarship and history. With creative, fittingly difficult puzzles, superb dialogue and engagement with historical figures, beautiful, historically accurate designs, and excellent music, it’s a standout entry and a significant advancement for SWANA storytelling in gaming. Inspired by the past, Lunacy Studios is building on that legacy to inspire the present and future.

House of Hikmah is available now on PC via Steam.