Juegazo! por donde lo mires

Cortito y con una historia bien contada. Tiene su atractivo en el desarrollo del personaje, y si bien algo del final es predecible, pega una vuelta de rosca que te deja pensando "como se me escapo esto?"

Recomendadisimo!!

9/10

It is beautiful to look at. It's extremely atmospheric, the sound design is great, the voice acting is great. The game mechanics are very simple, and clean. The gameplay and game design of this game are amazing.

The plot, however, is so terrible that I cannot in good conscience recommend this game. And I don't mean it in the wink-wink-nudge-nudge way, I mean I truly do not think this studio deserves money from this product, and I regret supporting them by purchasing it myself. Watch a let's play of this or look at screenshots if you want to experience this game, do not buy.

Spoilers below:
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I read the reviews and had the vague ending of the game spoiled to me pre-purchase. I got the game thinking 'ok, it can't be THAT bad, these people are being dramatic'. It is. It is that bad. And the issue isn't even from the fact that the main character's dad is a pedophile who preyed on an extremely isolated girl he was tutoring, or that Rachel was killed by the mother, or even that Irving would go to the hotel to work with the pedophile who knocked up his sister to try to solve her murder. The problem is that by the end of the game, the story is trying its hardest to paint the mother as the exclusive bad guy, and the father as a misunderstood, desperate man who's stayed tragically in love with Rachel since her murder. And! By the end of the game everyone is dead, including Irving (by suicide), and the game gives you the choice to have the main character kill herself too. You also have the choice NOT to kill her, but if you don't have her commit suicide, she instead decides to spend the rest of her life in the falling-apart, rotting hotel trying to return the hotel to its glory days and reunite with her "mommy and daddy".

So, ok, besides the fact that this game doesn't treat the idea of suicide tastefully or respectfully AT ALL (rather, it's used exclusively as a plot device that 'crazy people' turn to as an escape AND as a punishment), WHY did the game choose to make the father sympathetic? By the end of the game, we are told that the mother is desperate to be loved and needed, so in a jealous rage she killed the pregnant teenager that her pedophilic husband r*ped and knocked up (keep in mind that since the main character says the affair lasted a year, Rachel was actually 15 when this all started). Everyone talks about how perfect and angelic Rachel was, and how the father's love for her (and her alleged returned love) was pure and simple (I mean....not simple enough, apparently, since he r*ped her), and how the main character didn't need to be jealous of Rachel because her father's soul "was big enough to love both you and Rachel." I mean I HOPE not, because the 'love' he had for Rachel was sexual. And Rachel and the main character were very much the same age.

The affair, the grooming, the mother killing Rachel or, hell, the father killing Rachel and the mother helping hide the body even, those would have been fine plotlines. That would have made a good, tragic story, where Rachel alone (and to an extent the main character) was the victim. Irving getting unhinged and helping the father try to solve the murder, and being ok with all the creepy things the father did, that could be ok too. It's the fact that the story tries so hard to make the father into a tragic victim who did nothing wrong, the fact that by the end of the story the main character is calling him "Daddy" again and longing for his affection and comfort again, that's so absurd. And the fact that the main character's fate is either 'commit suicide to be with everyone in heaven', or 'presumably live out the rest of her days talking to herself and wandering the decrepit hotel like the Hollywood version of a crazy person' is an insult to her, the player, and real life people who are victims of parental/guardian/mentor abuse.

Not to be petty, but it's also straight up bad story-telling. We have NO hints throughout the game that the main character is anything but blunt, pragmatic, and level-headed. At MOST she thinks there MIGHT be a ghost in the hotel, but even then, you can chose answers agreeing that it's probably the wind. You're telling me that over the course of a week her response to finding out her mother killed a teenager that she was ALREADY FURIOUS at her father for allegedly driving to suicide is to become unhinged herself, and NOT to get angry again and want to burn the hotel to the ground? That she goes full Shining, immediately? Ok.

Genial y muy detallado 'walking simulator'. ¡El sonido! Muy recomendable vivir la experiencia con buenos auriculares. Suspenso, misterio y una sensación de soledad muy inmersiva (por momentos desesperante).

Juego más a éste género y más fanático me vuelvo. Estas historias interactivas buscan tocar una fibra personal en cada uno y es un ejercicio de empatía enorme. Está muy bien reírse y líarse a los tiros con amigos y este tipo de juegos (si, son juegos aunque mucho pataleen al respecto) viene a dar cierto equilibrio al reino, comúnmente lleno de adrenalina y pólvora, de los videojuegos.

El juego es corto pero atrapante. Hubiese estado bueno que alentara a ver todas las habitaciones del hotel. Otra de las cosas es que no esperaba ese final realmente, y odié el hecho de que normalizaran mucho la relación entre una niña de 16 y un hombre mucho mayor, da asco ver que para los presentes era normal su relación, pero supongo que no era mal visto debido al año que transcurre, fuera de eso lo disfruté bastante.
Si querés algo rápido, con giros poco esperados y una historia dramática, te lo recomiendo.
No me gustó que romantizaran la pedofilia, asi que mi puntaje es 7.5/10

Cero recomendable. Es una historia sobre grooming/pederastia espantosamente encarada.
Ya bastante desagradable era la falta de repudio a la pederastia/estupro en la narrativa, pero además al tipo mayor se lo repudia más por cag4r a la esposa que por la clara relación de poder y abuso que tiene sobre una menor (y encima lo llaman "historia de amor").

Trama misteriosa y, por momentos, bastante desconcertante que toca temas delicados sobre los cuales me hubiera gustado más profundidad. La dosis justa de terror sin el cliché de los jumpscares. Muy buena ambientación del hotel donde los sonidos logran ser inmersivos y nos hacen sentir mucha tensión (jugarlo con auriculares). Juego perfecto para pasar en una tarde de invierno con un café con leche o chocolatada para variar.

I don't usually do reviews, but after suffering through this mess with my fiance I felt obligated to so. I'm only going to hit a few of the big points as I'm sure other reviewers have touched on all of them already. I'm really only here to add my downvote to the pile and hopefully help any likeminded players avoid this entirely.

There will be major spoilers in this review, continue at your own behest with that knowledge if you have not already played or watched the game.


I'll start with what I thought was actually done well, which honestly is really only the opening sequence and the general design of the hotel the game takes place in. -- I surpassed the word limit and had to cut this part out. The hotel was cool, basically. Sorry if things look a little disjointed as a result, there were more cuts.--

So to get right into the bad playing off that last point, the hotel actually kinda sucks once you're allowed to explore it. There are a few places you are barred entry to until pre-defined game sequences, but for the most part the entire game takes place between a small handful of rooms that you'll be hobbling back and forth to to further the plot (and I mean hobbling, the base walking speed is a slow crawl and the 'run' speed is almost a casual walking pace). Exploration is not encouraged nor is it rewarded. The game *explicitly* tells you at the start, that careful observation was required to find 'the truth' but this is a blatant lie.

Nothing you can look at that isn't your specific goal that triggers the next bit of exposition to be puked at you will ever matter. You can pick up objects to rotate them around and get a better look at them, but this mechanic is an afterthought, there is no point in the game where you glean any additional information or learn any fun secrets by examining items that you couldn't have gotten just from looking at it.

To top it off, you are railroaded into following the plot point for point at the exact slow pace the game wants you to do so, finding the little hatches that access crawl spaces, or other important items or locations early just means you know exactly where they are when the game deigns to allow you to touch them. (A particular frustration for me was during my playthrough when you get a very obvious screwdriver hanging half off a shelf all the way in the basement, which gets a little label when you look at it, but you cannot pick it up until it's needed for the plot later, which entails a long walk down to it.

--What little exploration there is, is not touched on by the characters, even the spooky candles in the bathroom.--

There's an entire floor plan, including a handheld map of each floor you can examine at any time, for 3 floors plus the basement of the hotel, and you can see on your handheld map as well as the big maps on the walls that only a few rooms will ever be enterable during the game, as they are the only ones with an internal floor plan. Despite this, your character mentions on her first day that you cannot get into the rest of the hotel rooms to inspect them (the premise of being there in the first place) without the key. You will never be asked to search for this key, nor is there one for you to find. So outside of the few rooms open to you and the direct plot, you will explore a lot of hallways and not much else.

This ties into a major frustration I had in the early game, --you don't investigate a damn thing, every piece of plot information is spewed at you through the character Irving, on your cell phone, who is a creepy and increasingly unhinged character responsible for manipulating the entire game. This includes your arrival time, trapping you in the hotel, deliberately scaring you and leaving 'clues' around for you to find. Despite this, Irving is meant to be portrayed as a charming voice of reason for your character. Your own character mind you, has her entire personality from the opening sequence dropped, then cycling back and forth seemingly at random and suddenly being perfectly cool with the Irving character, who you actively dislike on day one.

All of the development that leads to that is implied to happen during the random time jumps at the end of every 'day', where you will complete your set objective and then suddenly black screened to another random point of the hotel an undetermined amount of time later for the next objective. To make this even worse, the only kinda cool potential for 'investigation' that happens during the game is handled FOR you, in favor of asking Irving his thoughts on the characters discoveries; a set of clues --you get jump cut to already laid out.-- Larger spoilers ahead.

All of this would be somewhat forgivable, except the increasingly off the wall and disgusting plot that we're being forced into, which seems to start off on the right foot, devolves into Irving berating your character (and her perfectly accepting of this insane nonsense) as well as the entire plot building up how great your character's father was, a pedophile/rapist who impregnated Rachel Foster, his 16 year old student with developmental disabilities, who was possibly kept (likely with the knowledge of her own father, the Reverend or whatever) in a secret underground prison of a room just beneath the chuch, with crayon drawings of windows and furniture and whatnot. Your father is played up to be the tragic hero of this entire story, with everyone else being in the wrong for their reaction to his disgusting behavior. Irving, now revealed as Rachel's younger brother, even angrily tells you at one point "Your father was a *very* special man, and he had love enough for BOTH of you.--" Something that your character, instead of rightfully being wigged out by, actually apologizes to Irving for.

You will then find out that your mother, who ran away with you after the discovery of the fathers affair years before the game began, actually murdered Rachel and dumped the body herself. Subsequently painted as the only character in the wrong in this plot. After this point, Irving goes out to kill himself in the winter storm while the character, now inexplicably attached to him, begs and pleads for him not to do it. The next jump cut scene ends with you back in your car in the garage, with a tube from the muffler to your window, waiting to kill yourself. You get a call from the lawyer who was going to help you sell the hotel, tell him you're staying forever and then go into an unhinged monologue talking to your 'daddy', mom, Rachel and Irving about how you'll all be together again.

It's not clear here as there is no engine noise, but the car is already on and while you *can* turn it off to not let the main character kill herself, this is evidently not the option the dev wanted, as there is only an achievement for letting her kill herself. That's their intended ending. The last 30-40 minutes or so of the game (the final sequence or two) is just a huge mess of excuses being made for a pedophile and a complete abandonment of any logic or reason, you even visit the disgusting shrine to Rachel in your father's old 'man cave' in the attic. Included are several pencil drawings of, presumably, Rachel in sexual poses, a 'bed' made up of blankets and cushions on the floor. The entire thing is an unintentional nightmare for a love the game is trying to sell you between your 38-40 year old father and his again, 16 year old *student* with disabilities.

I honestly don't know what the devs were thinking. They had an amazing opportunity and a strong opening to approach what is inherently a deluge of sensitive topics and they just bait and switch you into getting punched in the gut and laughed at.

All in all, this game is not a great exploration walking sim, not a great investigation game, not a worthwhile story and altogether a disappointment. It doesn't do anything much better than other games of the genre and it does a lot much worse.

Up til the end I found the game pretty decent, bugs and all. But then the ending came and went... whooa not how I expected. Which usually don't make a game bad but in since the "unexpected" part was excusing and romanticizing p3doph!l!a and su!c!de it just made the whole experience feel all kinds of bad.

Super recomendado, para aquellos que disfrutan del suspenso y el misterio

Amor, tragedia, suspenso, tristeza, nostalgia, intriga y misterio...muerte. Cosas que jamas crei que llegaria a ver todas juntas, no puedo describir muy bien la experiencia que puede brindar este juego, encaja todo, entorno, sonidos, sensaciones, acertijos...No cabe duda que los desarrolladores pusieron corazon, alma y cuerpo para crear una aventura tan especial, que de verdad seria imposible no disfrutar al menos aunque fuese una vez.