Marshall Snyder

When I initially started playing this game I was quite excited, the premise and the visuals at the onset really set a mood for an intense and suspenseful game. But this game tanks pretty quickly. Speaking first of the actual gameplay: the game lacks the sense of actually “ playing” you can pick up and look at random items, but it adds nothing to the play and they don’t Contain clues or anything useful. It’s a pointless mechanic. You do get an “inventory” of items to use… but they also feel pointless and contrived. I mean why get hotkey items that you use only once and which don’t really work in the first place? I could get over the useless items if the exploration of the hotel felt more like an actual puzzle being solved, or if you were interacting with elements of the hotel it’s self, but the game basically tells you exactly where to go, or is so vague that you just wander through every room until you get the next story piece. Almost the entire hotel is open to you from the start, so even exploring doesn’t really give you a feeling of accomplishment because even though the story continues to progress, you’ve already seen the hotel and very little changes. The story it’s self … it’s terrible… it’s weak, poorly conceived and even more poorly executed. It definitely lets you know from the start that the subject matter is going to be dark and heavy and definitely not for all audiences… but the more you go through the game the more it basically glorifies a pedophile who grooms a young girl and rapes and impregnates her.. then it basically takes every other person in the story and somehow tries to make them the bad guys? Like the characters who are children during the event get painted as being in the wrong for not doing anything to stop the abuse even though they are children and conceptually didn’t understand the situation or didnt have any power to change the situation. And the pedophile is painted as this super intelligent and philosophical guy and as if his grooming of a child and her subsequent death is some kind of Romeo and Juliet style tragedy. I mean literally the game refers to their relationship as true love and then goes on to make that the wife and daughter of the pedophile are in the wrong because they are angry about the situation….. there is a lot of possibility for this game to explore the complex effects and emotions of the different characters going through this situation- with anger and hurt and betrayal etc all being valid routes to explore… but the game instead creates one-dimensional characters andramrods motives that don’t make any sense then peaks and concludes by glorifying the pedophile and then victim blaming every other character in the game… and that’s literally the narrative point it ends on. This game shows an extreme lack of understanding and empathy for people who have or know someone who has gone through a situation of abuse or suicide. I don’t think these subjects should be off the table to discuss, they are important and impact people for their entire lives… but you probably shouldn’t make an entire video game on these extreme premises without having the least bit of consideration or apparently any knowledge on the truth of the subject matter. I especially do not recommend this game to anyone who has sensitivity to these topics.