Rusty Lake Hotel (2015)

Even though I knew about this game for many years, time has only come for me to start getting to know the games of studio Rusty Lake. I was worrying that it's too late because the times when I was really into surrealism and all that mystification stuff was approximately when I first downloaded Rusty Lake Hotel on mobile and for some reason didn't play it.

Long story short - it didn't feel uninteresting or unoriginal in comparison with other artworks of that kind. It has very exquisite soundtrack and overall ideas, but doesn't take itself too serious, most of its puzzles are quite logical and not too complex, the game can be beaten in ~2-3h which is fine by me, so I had a good time playing it. P.S. If you'll decide to play Rusty Lake Hotel and will want to complete everything in one walkthrough, you'd better know about the order in which the rooms should be covered and when some items should be taken since it's not obvious at all. Here's good enough guide that covers it, but the optimal order is written almost in the end of it. It's: Deer, Rabbit, Pigeon, Pheasant, Boar.

Intro

This is a point & click adventure game in which you have to kill hotel guests to feed them to the remaining ones.

The Good

It's a neat idea, the music is soothing and some of the puzzles are clever.

The Bad

First of all, some core features are really poor: There are no volume bars. Esc doesn't open the menu but sets the game to windowed mode. Moving around is done by clicking on tiny black buttons instead of, you know, buttons on the keyboard.

Secondly, to get the highest score you have to know the correct order for the rooms in advance. That's just bizarre, especially because this game doesn't have much in the way of replay value.

Finally, little of it makes sense. You get tabasco by clicking on antlers of a skull to make them grow after which the tabasco drops from its nose. At some point you have to click monkeys in the right order but it seems this can only be discovered through trial and error. Et cetera. You just start clicking on everything hoping something will happen.

Conclusion

It sounds cooler than it is.