The holiday season is upon us! And for me, that means playing yet another one of my all time favorite games, Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (HD). This is another one of those games that will just always be at the top of my favorites list. I even wrote a critical analysis of the immersion this game creates in my undergrad days. But I’m not going to bore you with that academic stuff here. This journal is meant strictly for game analyses.
HD is such a unique game, that I have a hard time classifying it as a single genre. Most might argue that it’s a visual novel (when playing, you even hold the DS sideways, like a book), some might say it’s more akin to a point-and-click adventure game. When the game was re-released, it branded itself on the cover as “an interactive mystery novel.” While the official classification is “adventure” I’d say it’s somewhere in between all of that.
HD starts out with a rapid flash of cut scenes. You’re introduced to the protagonist, Kyle Hyde, who is a disgraced ex-detective from New York. Hyde had shot his partner Brian Bradley (who had betrayed Hyde and the entire NYPD, for reasons that are explained much later in the game) and was summarily fired. Cut to three years later (December 28, 1979), and Hyde is seen working as a door-to-door salesman in Los Angeles. Only, that’s just a cover. Hyde’s real job is to find certain lost items that don’t want to be found. And it’s this reason that Hyde heads to a little hole in the wall called Hotel Dusk. This is all explained by Hyde, himself, in a film noire-esque monologue. It’s an odd way to set up the story, to go to a hotel to find a couple of random items, but it does the job. The real meat of the story is what happens when Hyde gets to Hotel Dusk (which is also when the actual gameplay begins).
The game in no way holds your hand in teaching you how to play the game, which is appreciated. It’s set up in such a way that any player should be able to figure out the controls on their own. With DS held sideways, you’re treated to two different visuals at first. On the left screen is the first-person perspective of Kyle Hyde. And at the beginning of the game, that means you’re treated to the scene of Hotel Dusk’s lobby. At first glance, the place is a dump; peeling wallpaper, faded pin up posters, cracked leather sofas, slowly rotating ceiling fans. Although not the most visually impressive game (it was a 2007 DS game after all, hardly a graphics giant), it does a good enough job to set the atmosphere of the hotel. On the right screen, however, is all of the player’s HUD. Most of the screen contains a map, with a red circle and arrow. This indicates where Hyde is and what direction he is facing. By pointing the stylus on the map, Hyde will move that direction (you can also simply use the D-pad). Below the map is a set of buttons: a door (which is used to interact with the doors in the hotel), a person speaking (which is used to interact with the people in the hotel), a magnifying glass (which is used to get a better look at certain scenes [while using the magnifying glass, you can point-and-click certain objects in the scene, which will either give you more information on the item or allow you to interact with it in some way]), and a notebook (which opens the game’s menu for saving, inspecting items on hand, etc.).
These buttons are only usable if they’re lit up, and they only light up when necessary (except for the notebook, which can be used at any time). In this way, the game guides the player without being obtrusive. You’ll know when you can inspect an area, because the magnifying glass will light up when you’re near an area that can be inspected. In this way, you aren’t wasting your time trying to comb over every minute detail of the entire hotel. Of course, many things that can be inspected are just for fun. For example, you’ll never need to worry about the dartboard wall clock in the lobby, but you will hear Hyde quip about the place being decorated by a frat boy.
By interacting with the environments and, more so, the people within the hotel, you get a good idea of who Kyle Hyde is, as a person. He’s got a gruff, mostly serious personality, but he’s also got a bit of a sarcastic side. Hyde likes to make a lot of snide comments in his head, in fact. And this is differentiated by text color. Speech is always white, while thoughts are blue. This doesn’t really add a ton to the gameplay itself, but it is a fun bit of juice.
HD being a quasi-visual novel, there is a ton of talking done in the game. Conversations abound, and thankfully, this is never dull. The writing in the game is absolutely fantastic. Each character in the game is just oozing personality. They aren’t just stock characters, each one is very unique and it is shown through the game’s dialogue, visuals, and music. Each character has their own unique traits which just adds to their realism. Although all the characters are depicted through black and white, animated sketch drawings (adding to the feeling of reading a book) they still feel very real. They show detailed facial expressions when reacting to conversations. Each character has their own unique speech patterns, some use proper English, while some use slang. and each character usually has some sort of specific soundtrack playing when talking to them.
For example, one of the first characters you meet is Dunning Smith, the owner of Hotel Dusk. This first interaction immediately gives you an idea of what kind of guy Dunning is. First, he mistakes you for the maid, yelling and cussing about you interrupting him during the hockey game. Upon seeing his mistake, he instantly puts on the facade of a pleasant business owner. During all of this, there’s a twangy blues style music playing in the background, which just adds to the character’s personality. Hyde put it best, in one of his inner thoughts, “Dunning Smith, huh? Seems like a grumpy piece of leather.”
Of course, Dunning isn’t the only character in the hotel. Throughout the game, the player is introduced to all sorts of odd folk. There’s Rosa the maid, an overweight, over protective, gossiping, mother-figure. Louie DeNonno, the 20-something, laid back, hippie bell hop, who also happened to be a pickpocket that Hyde had arrested more times than he could count back in his detective days. Melissa Woodward, a precocious little 9-year-old with an attitude. Helen Parker, a one eyed old woman, determined to have her “wish” granted. The mysterious mute young woman, Mila. And so on.
As I said before, each character is brimming with personality. They are also all brimming with secrets. As the game is played out, Hyde finds that in some inexplicable way, each guest at the hotel is somehow connected to one another, and more importantly, connected to the crime syndicate Nile (which is the group Hyde’s ex-partner joined, betraying Hyde and the NYPD). It isn’t long at all before Hyde realizes that this hotel and its guests will somehow lead him to finding answers regarding his missing partner, Bradley. So, he gets to work investigating the hotel and it’s denizens.
Gameplay-wise, this is split up into various chapters. Each chapter is roughly an hour long. Not that time factors into the game, an hour just passes whenever you finish a chapter. This is strictly meant to tell the story’s progression (the entire game takes place between the night of December 28, 1979 and the early hours of December 29, 1979). But, each chapter usually focuses on one guest and their particular story. Completing a chapter is mostly accomplished through exploring the hotel, solving puzzles, and having various conversations with key characters.
HD is pretty open with it’s exploration. You can go pretty much anywhere (with the exception of a few locked rooms, such as the rooms of other guests). Luckily, the hotel isn’t exactly large (there are 11 guest rooms in total). So, you’ll rarely get lost. Your goal is also (almost) always clear. Hyde is in Hotel Dusk for a reason, and he will remind the player as much through his inner thoughts. He’ll remind the player that he needs to go speak with Rosa, or he needs to check out the laundry room, or so on. There’s always a goal in mind for each part of each chapter, so the player is never left guessing what they need to do. They may be guessing how to do it, though as the puzzles are a bit of an odd beast.
Ironically, the very first puzzle in the game, is a literal jigsaw puzzle. While trying to head upstairs to Hyde’s room, the player is blocked by Melissa, who is trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle in the middle of the stairwell. In order to get her to move, you have to finish the puzzle for her. While simple, this sets the stage for all of the game’s puzzles. They all have real life solutions. Although some solutions might be a bit obscure, they’re all doable in real life.
For instance, Hyde’s suitcase key breaks so he needs to find some way to pick the lock. The player might find a paperclip and try to pick the lock with that, but they’ll find the paperclip isn’t thick enough. So, instead, the solution requires a bit more searching on the player’s part. By finding some wire cutters, the player can cut a hanger in the room, netting them a thick piece of wire with which to pick the lock.
My personal favorite puzzle, though, has to be one regarding a cassette tape. Late in the game, Hyde finds a cassette tape that’s had the tape pulled out. In order to fix it, and listen to what’s on the tape, the player needs to use the pencil found in Hyde’s suitcase and wind the tape back into the cassette. I found this puzzle particularly juicy by the way it uses a once common practice obscured by time. I’m curious if younger players would have ever realized that solution.
Exploration and puzzles aside, the real meat of the game takes place through conversation. Conversation is the key component of the game. Hyde is determined to get to the bottom of Hotel Dusk’s secrets, and the only real way to do that is by talking with the other NPCs and getting as much information out of them as possible.
When conversing with the other characters, you are constantly given prompts to ask further questions. This opens up dialogue options for the player. These options vary greatly in how the NPCs react. Some options, it won’t matter which one you choose. It will only slightly change the NPC’s reaction, ultimately resulting in the same outcome. However some dialogue options hold greater weight, and if you choose the wrong one, you’ll upset the NPC, which will result in them not giving you in info you wanted, so you’ll have to re-approach the person and go through it all again.
During my first couple of playthroughs, I found this vague question mechanic a bit irritating. It almost felt as if I was just guessing in how I was supposed to respond. But the more I played it, the more I realized that the game wanted me to truly understand the characters that I was interacting with. As I’ve said, too much now, the characters ooze personality. And by reading those personalities, you get a better idea in how to question them. For example, you wouldn’t yell at and harass the kid, Melissa. But when confronting the former pick pocket, Louie, you need to take a more “bad cop” approach to get him to open up. It’s not perfect, and I’m sure it frustrated many a player, but I can at least understand where the developers where going with this idea.
If you succeed in the guessing game that is questioning the NPCs, you will get further dialogue questions that will advance the conversation in meaningful ways. These questions appear as white, yellow, and red question mark blocks. The color denoting the importance of the question. White are usually unimportant, and optional. Yellow are important. And red questions are saved for the final interrogation scenes.
Interrogation scenes usually mark the end of a specific chapter. After you’ve acquired enough information on a certain NPC you confront them and grill them regarding certain matters that you’d learned about throughout that specific chapter. These are much more intense conversations and asking the wrong question or pushing the character in the wrong way won’t result in you having to do it again, it will instead result in a game over. While the right choice is usually easier to determine by this point, there is still room for error, so player beware.
On a side note, should you manage to play the game perfectly, without making any incorrect dialogue choices, you’re rewarded with a small post-credits cut scene that I found particularly fun for closure’s sake.
I would note, that at the end of each chapter (after the interrogation scene) Hyde performs a sort of retrospective monologue to get everything straight. This is done by Hyde explaining the events of the chapter,which is peppered with easy multiple choice questions that the player must answer. I understand the developers wanting the player to keep up with all the game’s events, but this particular section of the game always bothered me as being dull and unnecessary.
When all’s said and done, though, HD provides a fantastic experience overall. Figuring out the incredibly complex mystery surrounding the hotel and all within it is a great time.
HD is a difficult game to explain, analyze, or describe. Even though it is one of my favorite games of all time. It is just such a unique experience. And it’s really one that can only truly be appreciated by experiencing it first hand, immersing yourself into, and getting to know the people inhabiting, the world of the game. So, should you ever find the opportunity, I would highly recommend taking a drive down that dusty, abandoned highway, stopping by that old red brick building, and checking in to Hotel Dusk to experience it yourself.
BONUS ANALYSIS!!!
There was a single sequel made for Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (before Cing went out of business). It was titled Last Window: The Secret of Cape West. This game was never released in the US, but it was released in the UK. And as DS’s were not region locked, anyone able to track down a British copy through online retailers could easily play it just fine (with the exception of a few odd British spellings and phrases).
Last Window features Kyle Hyde in an all new story, in a new setting, and with new characters. However the gameplay is largely the same, and so, it’s not really worth doing an entire new analysis. I just wanted to mention the game’s existence for those that appreciated Hotel Dusk, and wanted more. Although I would say it’s not quite as good as Hotel Dusk, it’s still a fun game.