Little information is known about publisher/developer Joystick Knights, but in their short time on Steam they've managed to pump out three games in May of 2018, and two more in June of the same year. Shining Hotel: Lost in Nowhere is their second release in the month of June, and as you can guess by the title it's largely inspired by a collective of author Stephen King's work.

You wake up in a seemingly normal hotel room, and your only directions are written in glowing writing on the wall; you must find your way to room 221. That room is just at the end of a very short hallway. You'll get there, and wake up again in your hotel room. Each time you wake up, your surroundings have become more decrepit, and new hotel room doors have opened up for exploration. The concept is very reminiscent of the book/movie 1408, with a slight hint of Silent Hill throughout.

Unfortunately, the experience is extremely short; clocking in at 10-20 minutes in length, depending on how much you attempt to explore the small, repetitive area. There are a couple different endings, depending on the path that you choose once the game draws to a close, but getting the one that you didn't initially pick may prove to be difficult. On my second playthrough of the game, the key area right before being able to pick the ending path glitched and wouldn't let me continue; despite restarting the checkpoint multiple times.

Even though it's nowhere near original, Shining Hotel: Lost in Nowhere has an interesting concept that translates well into a gaming environment. The endings, however, leave much to be desired, and the game as a whole feels completely unfinished. Unfortunately, its pricepoint of $10.29 CAD is far too high for what feels like a free demo; it's a $1.09 CAD release at best. In its current state, and at its current price, I'm unable to recommend what feels like a borderline shovelware game. Joystick Knights may very well have just had some projects saved up to put on Steam, but the amount of games that they've released in such a short period of time put them on the "possible bad developer" watchlist.

The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore

This is one of those games where you get a wobbly cutscene of waking up and getting up from a bed, you walk down a hallway with very limited options as to what to do and a "jumpscare" or in most cases, nothing of interest happens and you loop round; this happens about 6 times and then the game gives you most of the story in its not-quite-ending cutscene; the story is an interesting premise, but it is just walls of text right before the game does nothing with it.
You then get the 'choice' or multiple endings bit one of which leads to a little bit more of the same game loop, another which puts you back at the start and another which just mercifully ends this quicker.

First playthrough was 8 minutes and for $9, I don't think it warrants a second playthrough; this is disappointing because the story it sets up would actually be an interesting game to play, but the Developers didn't make that game.

Edit: I thought this might be one of those games that fakes you out with a short, unsatisfying bad ending and the multiple endings are actually a longer and decent experience, so I deleted my initial review, went back and played the other possibilities and this isn't one of those games.
Of the choices for endings, you Loop around to the beginning OR Jump out a window into a short, endless void OR You go down a long staircase and jump into a pit, in theory, also killing yourself the third ending didn't even work for me, I tried it twice and nothing triggered, so I dislike this even more after attempting to give this the benefit of the doubt and try the remaining "content"; should have stuck with the 8 minute annoyance I had initially.

The game has a cool concept, but it should have only cost $1. It was over in 5 minutes. This is going to come back and bite you in the long run.

The game quality isn't even that bad, the problem is the game is about 15 minutes long.

Since I've opted to thumb this game up, I should start this review with a highly emphatic disclaimer, namely:

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME AT FULL PRICE, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. I bought it in a pack with another game for a smidgen under ten dollars, and it was still FAR TOO MUCH. This game is very, VERY short (twenty minutes, tops), and worth maybe two bucks at best. That said: I've never thumbed a game down purely on the basis of its price, and I'm not about to start here. You have, however, been warned. On with the review, then...

After a good 'n' moody menu - with a decided dearth of Options - things don't get off to the most promising of starts. We wake up in a hotel room, and a message on a wall - written in alarmingly plain and non-"REDRUM"-ish text - instructs us to look out the window. Despite your character's observation that he sees nothing unusual outside, the city view on offer is so crude and ugly that the dev needn't have bothered drawing our attention to it at all (though it does, arguably, play a small part in the plot to come, and did add at least eight seconds to the game's lean running time).

Our next instruction is to head out into a hotel corridor and look for a specific room (not room 237, amazingly enough)! It is as we emerge into the corridor that the game's next notable design decision swims dizzily into focus: namely, the "headbob" function. Now, I'm actually quite a big defender of headbob, despite the assertion of many that it's "unnatural". Personally, I find a bob-less point-of-view to be so smooth that it more closely resembles floating; but in the case of this game, I probably would've chosen such an immersion-breaking device over the nausea-inducing effect favoured here. "Over-the-top" really doesn't convey how distracting it is (though you obviously get used to it).

Add to this the unnecessarily loud footsteps, that almost seem to cast your character as the ED-209 from Robocop and, er...yeah. Again, as someone who strongly believes in footstep foley in first-person games...could'a done without it. So far, so not-so-subtle. (Though I now, at least, have an inkling why the view out the window looked more like an eighth-rate Blade Runner cityscape than anything resembling real life.)

The design flaws don't end here, however. I missed the first genuine "event" in the game altogether, by not looking in the right direction at the right time (but still got an Achievement for meeting "The Mother", despite not seeing her; a second playthrough revealing that I had to enter a room backwards to catch a glimpse)! I also can't say for sure if the game has much genuine "danger" or not, given that I also received Achievements for getting away from "The Radio Ghost" and "Camerahead", when they seemingly managed to molest me anyway...

Now for the good stuff. The atmosphere is decent. The sound, footsteps aside, is actually quite effective (some very nice radio-based stuff). The story and "gameplay" are...look, they're fine, though hardly inspired: fairly standard deja vu/Groundhog Day-ish stuff, that's been all the rage since P.T. failed to evolve into Silent Hills. (Lucky for this game, I actually like that kinda thing.) There's also some fairly "good bits" here and there, and a couple of competent jump scares. Nothing to write home about, but nothing to complain bitterly about either.

Quite what they were thinking with that price, however, I'll never know. I guess there's always suckers (read: reviewers) like Yours Truly who'll cough up some dough; if only for the privilege of posting one of the earliest critiques. I suppose some small degree of longevity might be provided by the three different endings, but I'll honestly never know given that the game glitched near the end of my second playthrough - with doors no longer opening! - thereby heralding the time to call it quits.

Oh, and a small post-script to the whole window business. I nabbed another Achievement when I looked out and saw that, and I quote, "something has changed". Sure enough something had, as the image out the window was now at least passable by the standards of a Playstation 1 game, as opposed to a Commodore 64. Still don't know why they bothered, though...I personally would've just kept the curtains closed...

Verdict: 5/10 (a pass, in other words, though not by much. Never let it be said that I'm ungenerous)!

(PS If you enjoyed this review, feel free to check out my two Curator pages: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/9284586-ReviewsJustfortheHELLofit/
http://store.steampowered.com/curator/10868048-Truly-Horrible-Horror-Games/?appid=398210
Cheers!)

Game is way overpriced for what you're getting.

incredibly short, will take you less than 30 minutes to play. it's really just a, play this through twice and you'll get an easy perfect game and all the achievements game. Don't spend money on it lol. it's pointless beyond that

If im being honest at the beginning of this game it had something, There was some tension and some good atmostsphere, but its completely ruined when the "scariest" thing that happens is a man with a camera for a head. Note the quotes on scariest. I also can't fathom how this mediocre trash pile is $9! I wouldn't buy on sale, or ever. stay away if you enjoy fun.

This wasn't good as I hoped. I ignored the reviews because I had to play for myself, and I should've listened.

Partway through the game you randomly get a flashlight ♥♥♥♥. Bright light emitting from your pelvic region that allows you to destroy a shadow demon. Thanks so much for fulfilling my specific fetish, though I wish you added support for one handed players ;)

10/10