Croatian developer Cateia Games hasn’t been letting the grass grow under its feet since emerging from The Legend of Crystal Valley last year. Instead, the studio has been busy constructing a Hotel. No, not the kind for dead mountaineers, but the sort that’s open to all. In fact, while not exactly “casual” in nature, the upcoming paranormal mystery is designed to be easily accessible to genre newcomers, providing a lite adventure experience that anyone can play. Now nearly finished, with its grand opening slated for early June, Cateia threw open the doors to give Adventure Gamers an early first-hand preview tour.

The hotel in question is the deluxe Bellevue Hotel in France, a converted medieval castle now owned by the wealthy Greenleaf family. As posh as it is, New York police detective Bridget (“Biggi”) Brightstone doesn’t want to be there. She was enjoying a relaxing vacation on the beach when her boss called in a favour to investigate a curious case of personal importance. A valuable necklace has gone missing, and its unidentified owner now lies in a coma for reasons also unknown. Reluctantly, Biggi accepts, and soon finds herself standing before the hotel’s imposing stone edifice. Naturally, this being an adventure, even getting through the doors is no easy task, but the first hurdle merely sets up the opportunity for an onscreen tutorial to walk players through the basic gameplay mechanics.



Most people will probably skip the tutorial, as there’s really nothing new or surprising here. The point-and-click controls are simple and intuitive, with left-clicks performing all context-sensitive actions and right-clicks calling up the inventory. A hotspot highlighter is also available either through a simple keystroke or an unobtrusive onscreen menu. As with Crystal Valley, one peculiar interface quirk in Hotel is the need to hold the space bar to speed up Bridget’s rather meandering walk. It usually isn’t required, however, as once you’ve visited each new area, you can simply double-click an exit to travel there immediately each time after, though the “learning” process needs to be repeated for each of the game’s four days.

As you begin to explore, it quickly becomes apparent that there’s far more to the case than first meets the eye. The angry local investigator is doing his best to keep Bridget away from the crime scene, unmarked secret passages abound, legendary ancient Egyptian artifacts keep turning up, and what’s with the ghosts? Yes, right, the Bellevue is rumoured to be haunted, and Biggi herself is witness to several surreal events that can’t be scoffed away. Are there really supernatural forces at work, or is it all just a really bad dream of some kind? That’s what players will need to figure out for themselves.

To do so, you’ll need to solve a variety of different puzzles along the way. Many of the organic obstacles are solved with inventory collection (and sometimes combination), from smashing down barriers to creating distractions to repairing broken equipment, but there are a handful of other puzzles to contend with as well. Whether it’s aligning patterns, solving sliders, or matching symbols to cryptic clues, there’s always something ready to test your logic. Some are certainly just puzzles for puzzles’ sake, but others are nicely integrated, like connecting various circuits and a tricky physics-based task of retrieving an elusive key. There’s a small maze as well, which is slickly presented in a swirling haze that teases with peeks of the path ahead, yet denies you the full glimpse you need to plot a path. Rest assured, however, that even the most directionally-challenged gamers will quickly navigate their way through.



Indeed, “quick” is a defining word for much of Hotel’s gameplay. A few of the standalone challenges may give you pause, but most experienced adventure gamers will breeze through much of the story. It’s not that the puzzles themselves are so easy, but the game is so linear that there’s rarely any doubt about what your next task is or how to accomplish it. There are very few non-essential hotspots, most of the castle is closed off when not immediately required, and when a new obstacle is presented, you can be sure that the items you need will always be close at hand. Even conversations generally only offer one single option after another. A little more interactivity and open-endedness would serve the game well, but Hotel is clearly designed to keep frustration at a minimum.

Most of your time will be spent in the Bellevue, but you won’t actually see all that much of the hotel proper. You’ll rummage through a few rooms and offices, nose through the library, and pop into its glass-walled restaurant, but you’ll also do lots of poking around behind the scenes where you don’t belong, like hidden underground tunnels and locked basement areas. When you do get outside, you’ll wind up in a quaint little abandoned village, its ivy-strewn cobblestones crumbling from neglect, and from there travel to a few places you’d never imagine. I won’t spoil anything, but let’s just say that space-time dimensions are suddenly thrown out the window, along with life and death as we know it.

The same escalating weirdness applies to the characters in the game as well. If you ever wondered what people like Cleopatra, King Arthur, a power-hungry countess, and a mummified pharaoh’s vizier might have to do with a modern day hotel, this game will fill in the details, along with a few other surprises like a conspiracy that dates back to the Roman Empire (okay, that part isn’t so surprising). Otherwise, the hotel is notably barren. The guests were purportedly scared off by the original incident, so you won’t meet many people beyond the eccentric owners, the hotel butler, and the other detective that resents your interference. Then again, you will get calls from your boss on occasion, and check your laptop for e-mails, so you’ll never feel too lonely.



All this is wrapped up in a fairly decent, if low-budget, presentation that's a clear step up from the developer's previous adventure. The graphics won't dazzle you, but they are reasonably detailed and pleasant enough to look, making good use of lighting to distinguish day from night in the hotel, along with flashlights that follow the cursor in the dark. The music is consistently excellent, providing just the right ambience without ever intruding or becoming too repetitive. The opening cinematic offered a glimmer of promise for full voice acting, but it was not to be, as the main adventure is limited to subtitles only. This isn’t primarily a character-driven game, however, so the silent dialogues aren’t really an issue.

As with many games targeting casual markets these days, Hotel will be offered in both a standard version and “Collector’s Edition” for PC and Mac at the official website and GamersGate. The extras include bonus art and music, plus a strategy guide that’s easily accessed from any point in the game, though the gameplay is the same in both versions. Overall, this new title certainly isn’t as deep as The Legend of Crystal Valley, but for casual fans tired of hidden object games or anyone looking for a ‘tweener game between more substantial adventures, this is one Hotel you may just want to check out when it’s released next month.