GAMES
Will give you quite a sight…
★★★★★ OUT NOW PC, SWITCH
Five years ago, indie developer Simogo gave us the tear-streaked sugar rush of Sayonara Wild Hearts, an ‘interactive pop album’ of heartbreak songs soundtracking thrilling bursts of arcade-style action. This, then, could be considered the challenging follow-up LP: rather than aiming for the heart, the Swedish duo’s latest collaboration with boutique publisher Annapurna Interactive is setting its sights on a different vital organ. This is a much more cerebral affair – a narrative-led puzzler that stirs in inspirations from arthouse cinema and turn-of-the-century survival horror games.
You play as a nameless woman who arrives at a seemingly abandoned hotel, clutching an invitation from a mysterious host seeking help for a project that he says will ‘transcend the limitation of art for humans’. The letter is dated 1963, but upon her arrival the woman discovers a computer system from 2014: the first clue that all is not quite as it seems.
It’s a purposely confounding welcome to a setting that has been designed to disorientate: as you view the action from a series of static camera angles you can see faint traces of fuzzy photographs superimposed onto the environments. This double-exposure trick gives the game a dreamlike quality – though in contrast to Sayonara’s colourful reverie, this is more of a monochromatic nightmare. Not least when, following a paranormal encounter, you return from exploring a maze to find that something else has journeyed back with you…
This place, though, is more elaborate puzzle box than haunted house: a labyrinth of sealed doors and bolted shortcuts, with clues scattered throughout its rooms, corridors and exterior grounds to help you unlock more of it. As the hotel opens up, so too does your understanding of the story and your role within it: what initially seems off-puttingly opaque exerts a firm grip as the picture steadily comes int
