This Bed We Made
Cleaning up in THIS BED WE MADE
At the time of writing, I’ve never been employed as a space marine, supersoldier, bard, Spider-Man, or most of the jobs that characters in videogames tend to have. But in This Bed We Made you play as Sophie, a maid in a 1950s hotel. I have worked as a cleaner in a hotel, so I speak with some authority when I say that Sophie should be fired immediately.
You ‘clean’ each room by emptying the bins (good), scrubbing the bathtubs (great), placing fresh towels in the bathrooms (lovely), and making the beds by just smoothing out the sheets without even replacing the bedding (prison).
“Nothing like a well-made bed,” Sophie even says afterwards.
So if you’re looking for an immersive maid sim you’ll be disappointed. But if you’re looking for a nosy amateur detective adventure where you get to indulge your inner snoop you’ll find a great little game here.
Considering how much shady activity they’re involved in, the guests of the Clarington hotel are incredibly careless about leaving out incriminating correspondence, detailed records of debts unpaid, and all sorts of juicy puzzle pieces that you slowly slot together to create a picture of the room’s occupant. One guest has converted his bathroom into a photography darkroom, and it’s hard to focus on giving the tub a good scrub when you notice that several of the photos hanging up are of Sophie. Yikes. Thus begins an investigation into why exactly a guest has taken an interest in you.
The game is told in flashback, framed by Sophie’s interrogation by a police detective. You can choose to throw away certain objects and notes you find, which some squares might call ‘evidence tampering’.
The guests of the Clarington hotel are incredibly careless
It’s not just the beds you can leave in a bad state either, as it’s easy to be careless about covering your tracks when snooping. After so many detective games have let me trample all over crime scenes consequencefree, it’s refreshing to play something that rewards a considerate approach.
It’s not always as simple as remembering to clean up after yourself, either. Those creepy photos you found of yourself? They’re of you snooping through a guest’s belongings. It’s left up to you whether you destroy these incriminating snaps. Agonising decisions like this keep catching you off your guard in a game that’s adept at juggling tones.
Disco Elysium liked to remind you that because you were a cop, you could get away with a lot of strange behaviour.
