Ever had that dream that you’re roaming around in a hotel with no one else but you? A hotel with lots of empty rooms and lifeless personnel that pass you by without even giving a bit of notice? Well, I’ve had and the thing that got me the most was the atmosphere. The feeling of being alone in a big hotel and still being convinced that there’s someone out there, lurking behind every corner and watching me… it just gets to me. “The Spectrum Retreat” gives you this exact feeling, it’s a puzzle game with a twisted story that will keep you busy for a couple of hours.
The player embodies Alex, a guest at The Penrose Hotel. You’re being waked by a knock on the door of the hotel room. An A.I. robot, dressed up as a butler wakes you up to inform you that you’ve ordered this wake-up call and that your breakfast is being served at the restaurant. You get a phone call from a woman called Cooper and she tells you that the player suffers from memory loss. She will help you to regain these memories and to get out of this hotel. In a while, you begin to notice that this Hotel isn’t your ordinary hotel that you’re used to, it’s a digital hotel that’s meant for the ultimate escape from reality. A hotel that’s designed to fulfill all your needs and to keep you safe from reality. To escape this hotel, you’ll need to go floor by floor, color hacking your way out of there. With each floor hacked, this “perfect” hotel starts to fall apart, and you start figuring out who you are and what has become of you. These memory sequences are given in bits and pieces to keep up some suspense throughout the whole game and become invested in Alex’s past. Unfortunately, even though it’s a great way to implement a story within this puzzle game, the game’s story doesn’t really help you to care for your protagonist. The story is a bit too vague to really create a connection to the main protagonist Alex or even the voice of Cooper that wants to get to the bottom of this “memory prison”.
Don’t get me wrong, I truly love the atmosphere and the idea behind this “digital constructed hotel” but the story doesn’t captivate me as it should. The suspension is there from the beginning which offered a great start to play the game. However, this suspension truly loses it’s “strength” after a couple of hours in because without any heads-up, Cooper’s convinced that you’re trapped, and she makes it sound like your held against your will. So, the story of “Gaining your memories back”, quickly turned into “just get the hell out”. You don’t even build up a relation between Cooper and Alex, she just gives you instructions and without even questioning the person behind this “voice”, you follow as a mindless A.I. Most of the information is also given by Cooper, even though it’s bits and pieces. However, the game does loosen the lash to give yourself some space to explore the hotel yourself. You’ll find some collectible logs that’ll help you connect the dots.
Like I mentioned before, the game is all about puzzling. The weird storytelling is just a way to get players involved. Great idea but not executed greatly. Though the puzzling mechanic is very basic but it get’s the job done when it comes to “puzzling”. Alex’s phone can absorb different colors and he can transfer this color to glowing boxes. Once the color has been sent, it remains on the block until the next transfer. Some glowing boxes will have another color, Alex’s phone allows him to switch between these colors to get the right one that’ll do the job. These colors are important to solve the puzzles, as these different colors are used to bypass certain colored firewalls. The button layout is very simple, you only need your right and left trigger to play the game.
The puzzling sequences start off slow because they want you to learn how to use these colors. In the beginning, it’s all about switching between colors and finding the right path that’ll lead to the exit. You’ll also find “glowing boxes” that can spawn a certain color “infinite” times, however, once you’ve switched a color to this “infinite box”, chances are high that you’ll lose the switched color. The switched color will be replaced by the box’s current color. The next puzzling mechanic allows you to jump to a specific panel if the color on your phone matches the color on this specific panel. This makes the puzzles a couple of times harder and eventually, you’ll have to work with gravity panels that’ll change the environment to your advantage. These mechanics are very simple and aren’t revolutionary, but it does make up for some challenging puzzles.
I do have to mention the fact that some puzzles are a lot more interesting than others. The variation between simple and difficult is definitely there, but they don’t come in a logical order. There were also some issues with the puzzles including the jumping/ gravity pads. Some jump pads didn’t respond as they’re probably supposed to and some of the gravity puzzles seemed a bit rushed. There was a moment where I thought that I solved the puzzle by cheating instead of the correct solution. Not all the puzzles felt like I completed them fair and square. I also didn’t like the fact that you had the possibility to really become stuck during a puzzle and that you had to restart the challenge. Once the challenge was restarted, you had to start over again completely. I would have preferred checkpoints because some of the puzzles did get long and needed a lot more time than I had at that specific moment. Losing your progress during a challenge, quickly becomes frustrating, which will eventually lead to making even more mistakes. This was especially frustrating in the end.
Within these puzzling sequences, you’ll find some areas that represent a piece of the memory puzzle. You’ll find some grouped up objects that should help you with understanding the story. However, a lot of these areas feel the same and unworthy to check them out. At some point during the game, the only thing you really could get out of these clustered objects is the amount of money Alex has spent on some medical bills. Again, I love the idea but it’s just not interesting.
Conclusion:
“The Spectrum Retreat” isn’t a bad game, it’s just not “great” either. I loved the setting/atmosphere of the hotel, I liked the idea behind this hotel, but it hasn’t been executed that great. The puzzling mechanics are simple to use and can offer some challenging puzzles, but they aren’t revolutionary. I didn’t like the fact that there was no real checkpoint system as some puzzles can actually make you get stuck during the game. Restarting a challenge is a great option, but it’s not a lot of fun when you lose all of your progress. If you’re a fan of puzzling, you’ll definitely get some time out of this game but don’t do it for the story or revolutionary mechanics.
