The Guest is a 3-star game that gets bumped down due to a clunky UI and lighting problems. I understand it's a "gloomy" game, but it's too dark and requires the fiddling of brightness settings back and forth. For example, the game was so dark that I couldn't see something inside of a cabinet so I turned the brightness up. Then, later, because the brightness setting caused an insane glare I was unable to read what was on a screen and had to turn it back down. If you play this game do yourself a favor and turn off the "bloom" effects in the settings. The UI isn't so awful, but the game is mostly using inventory items, and you have to hit ESC or Q three times to back out of the UI. It's not a huge deal, but in this era of games it's sort of inexcusable. There's also some item use sections that are rough around the edges (Need to use one item on another? Well if you have it equipped too early you can't crouch down to access the puzzle! Better unequip it, crouch down, and then re-equip it in the menus.)

The puzzles are mostly "use this thing you picked up with some other stationary thing." There's a little inventory item combining. There are a few puzzles, and only one of them stumped me. I had to look up the puzzle in the bathroom, mostly because I wasn't loving the game and thought "what am I really proving, here?" None of the puzzles were my kind of thing. And I like puzzle games, I just found the few that existed here all fiddly and boring.

There is no story, though some of the literature you find scattered around hints at one. Though, all of that literature is nullified because you find a thing later saying it's fabricated. The game ends with some kind of twist about how this was all a test and you will be a member of a new society. You are given pills every 8 hours that suppress your every desire, as to not hinder your work output. It's quite clumsy and doesn't really work, though I understand the desire to make a game where the ending is bad, and your character is essentially punished for following through.

The game is a big fat OK. It took maybe 2-3 hours to beat. I got it on sale for like $2.00. If you have exhausted all other non-combat first person puzzlers (my favorite genre), this sure is one of those.