Dear Reader:
Game Theory: Talking the Talk and Compiling the Clues
Hotel Dusk: Room 215, a noirish adventure game from Cing, has a beginning so stylish and artful that as I watched it, I could think only one thing; this game has nowhere to go but down.
If that makes me a pessimist and a cynic, then I have something in common with Dusk’s protagonist, Kyle Hyde, the world’s most unfriendly traveling salesman.
When he isn’t selling household goods, Kyle has a sideline finding missing objects, and it is this that brings him to a small hotel called Hotel Dusk.
Dusk is played on Nintendo’s dual-screen DS, with the player holding the DS sideways so the two screens are side by side. Kyle’s drive to the hotel is a lovely short animated film done like a living pencil sketch.
A road runs through a field, stretching across both screens. As Kyle passes a pale young woman on the roadside, we see their eyes meet as one screen closes in on Kyle and the other on the woman. Then, as she fades from view, the road once again takes over both screens. The split-screen technique is used elegantly, and each shot in each screen is beautifully composed.