Hotel Dusk: Room 215

Good
  • Interesting adventure and setting with a familiar foundation that adds mystery through the origins and rumours of room 215
  • Personal journal to hold clues as you obtain clues through detective methods of interrogation and analysing a scene
Bad
  • Some conversation dead ends can be frustrating as they drain time but offer nothing in return
  • The dialogue focused experience won't appeal to everyone and leans the game more towards story than video game
8

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is a point and click video gamer released in 2007 exclusively for the Nintendo DS platform which lets players explore the mysterious origins of a strange hotel that is said to be able to grant wishes to those that stay in a particular room.

hotel-dusk-room-215-gameplay-story

The bulk of this story adventure takes place in a fictional hotel located located deep in the heart of Los Angeles in the United States and is known Hotel Dusk. Playing as former experienced detective Kyle Hyde who has has left his New York City detective career behind and currently working in travelling sales role you’ll follow him to the hotel after a lead that might finally solve the case beyond the death of his former detective partner Brian Bradly rises.

Sent to room 215 in this hotel which is also rumoured to grant wishes to those that stay there your story of mystery begins as you make choices to direct the story to its eventual end. While the story of Hotel Dusk: Room 215 has a number of clichés on the surface it does takes a strange twist away from its familiar setting early on in the story which adds an element of fantasy and mystery.

hotel-dusk-room-215-gameplay-kyle-hyde

Gameplay in Hotel Dusk: Room 215 plays out like the puzzle adventure games of old and uses a point and click style interface for game interaction and story progression. Primarily this means that players must guide Kyle Hade around the hotel while interacting with the environment locations with the DS hardware touch screen.

Uncovering the truth requires a lot of detective work by the player though and isn’t just handed to players. This involves the collecting of clues, finding particular items and asking the right questions of the NPCs in the game world for important pieces of information that send you forward to the next series of clues. NPCs can’t be constantly accused to obtain information from them though so players will need significant evidence or reasons to pursue a conversation tree otherwise they will anger the NPC and potentially miss out on vital information all together.

hotel-dusk-room-215-gameplay-hotel-dusk

Puzzles form the rest of gameplay in Hotel Dusk: Room 215 with a number of standard puzzles to solve throughout the adventure. While these are unlikely to significantly slow down your process and basic in nature they do add an additional detective element and immersion as you use the DS hardware to perform simple tasks. Players can also keep notes in their journal which gives players several pages of reference to help their investigation to reach the end which is influenced by some of your major decisions and investigation results.

Summary:

  • A point and click adventure exclusively for the Nintendo DS.
  • Full of mystery and story as players explore room 215 in Hotel Dusk that is said to grant wishes.
  • Interrogate NPCs for clues using evidence from the environment to obtain new information.
  • Plenty of puzzles woven into the gameplay that require you to utilise the Nintendo DS hardware to perform basic actions.
  • Multiple story ending variations based on your decisions and clue gathering.

Links:

Videos:


Review Platform: DS

This review was first published on . Read our update policy to learn more.


Written by
Samuel Franklin
Samuel Franklin is the founder and lead editor of the Games Finder team and enjoys video games across all genres and platforms. He has worked in the gaming industry since 2008 amassing over 3 million views on YouTube and 10 million article views on HubPages.

Games Finder is a Steam Curator and featured in the aggregate review scores data of MobyGames and Neoseeker.
LEAVE A REPLY

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.