Rusty Lake is the development team responsible for the Cube Escape series (start with Seasons) of surreal, first person, point-and-click, room (or other enclosed area)-escape games. Rusty Lake is also a place; it’s the setting for all of the eponymous developer’s games so far, including their latest, Rusty Lake Hotel. It’s a creepy place, and one where it’s pretty easy to become trapped, it would seem.
Rusty Lake Hotel takes the macabre aspects of the Cube Escape games and ratchets them up to 10. It takes the room-escape template and applies it to something much more sinister.
When you begin the game, five guests are arriving at the titular inn, having been invited for five nights of feasting: Mr. Deer, Mr. Boar, Ms. Pheasant, Mr. Rabbit, and Mrs. Pigeon. On each night, you visit a different guest’s room, where you click around, adding things to your inventory and solving puzzles in the familiar rhythms of room-escape games.
Your goal, however, is not to escape. It’s left a little cryptic at first, but after successfully completing the first night, your intentions become clear. The goal of each room is to arrange an elaborate and gruesome murder, so that you can make the guests into delicious gourmet dishes. Each night’s recipe is proudly displayed following the kill.
The fact that the victims are anthropomorphized animals makes the violence somehow less horrible. It makes the atmosphere no less eerie, however. On the contrary, it heightens the weirdness of Rusty Lake (the place). Rusty Lake (the developer) are adept at crafting not only ingenious puzzles, but a uniquely strange world. It’s both deeply unsettling and darkly funny. I can’t wait for my next foray into it, and I heartily recommend this one.
Rusty Lake Hotel is $1.99 for PC and Mac, Android, and iOS.
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