Hotel Dusk

You can check in anytime you want, but you can never leave...until you finish the game.

by Wootini

What looks like an A-Ha video, plays like an interactive mystery novel and asks you to actually blow on the game to give a character mouth-to-mouth? Why, it's Hotel Dusk: Room 215 for the Nintendo DS, of course!

As Kyle Hyde, you play a disaffected ex-cop who does some private dicking for easy cash on the side while working for a delivery service. Heading to the titular Hotel Dusk on business, you find yourself wrapped up in the lives of the quirky residents, and each successive chapter unravels the mystery surrounding another one of them until the end, where the true secret of the hotel is finally revealed.

Hotel Dusk makes inventive use of the DS's two screens, asking the player to hold the game sideways, which has the added effect of making it feel even more like you're reading an interactive mystery novel. Unique touch-screen puzzles abound, whether peeling labels off wine bottles or blowing dust off of fingerprints. My favorite was after you put together a child's jigsaw puzzle, you actually close the DS and open it again to flip the puzzle upside down and reveal the secret message written on the back of the pieces. Spoiler! (Oops — guess that should've come before the description.)

The story is well-told and involving, with some interesting and fleshed-out characters, but what really pulls you into the world of Hotel Dusk is the fantastic art style. It's really no more than a series of still screens with limited animation (save for the movement around the hotel, done in full-on 3D), but the black-and-white pencil sketches with splashes of color are unlike anything else out there. And the soundtrack is surprisingly good too — don't forget to check out all the tracks when you get into the bar and can use the jukebox!

It's not particularly long, and the puzzles aren't particularly difficult aside from a couple of stumpers, but while it lasts, Hotel Dusk is a terrific — and unique — game that can only be played on Nintendo's funky little handheld. There's not much in the way of replay value, but hey, when were you going to read that book again anyway?