Rusty Lake Hotel Review (Snort Cannon)
A stay so good, you'll die for it.
Story:
You play as an employee in the mysterious Rusty Lake Hotel. The owner of the hotel has allowed five guests to stay over and it's your job to make their stay a memorable one.
I really want to dig deeper into the plot of the game, yet I really don't want to spoil where it goes, so I just typed in the basic gist. It's the same gist as the other Rusty Lake franchise games and of course that means a weird and surreal storyline that really makes you dig deep to understand what's going on and I'm actually really surprised with where it went as the ending really made the whole thing click with me a bit more.
Graphics:
Visually Rusty Lake Hotel is again very similar to the Cube Escape games and again the simplistic yet very surreal art is very pleasing to look at. The game allows you to explore a good majority of the Hotel and while a lot of it looks same-y, I do like how each room of the hotel is it's own specific set piece, it made the experience that more fun.
Since the game was made in Flash (correct me if I'm wrong) don't expect this bigger game to be much more impressive visually. There's still not much in the way of animation as everything is a bit stiff, but I generally still really liked it and with the setting it really made me nostalgic for older flash games.
Audio:
The audio design is pretty much on par with the other games as there's that Flash game audio crunch, but weirdly here it happens from time to time, some characters speak a lot more clearly and then when other characters speak there's a bit of a crunch. It's not as bad as it was in Cube Escape Paradox, but still something worth pointing out.
The other sound design is pretty decent. I really like the music and how it mixes with the sound effects. It oozes atmosphere, even though there's a few musical cues I'm pretty certain are stock free, but I feel like they're used in a good way this time around. And also yet again there's a lot of sound effects that have been re-used from the other games, but since they're sort of a staple of the franchise, I'm willing to let it go.
Gameplay:
Yet again, Rusty Lake Hotel is a horror point and click adventure game, where you go around pick up items and solve puzzles to progress further into the game. This time around however the game is split across multiple days and you have a set goal you need to achieve and you do this by entering a room and finding an item you need during the day.
I won't really mention what you need to do, you'll quickly learn that yourself, so let's go about with the puzzles. I found these puzzles to be generally much easier than the other Cube Escape games, but there was still quite a few times where I really stumped at what I needed to do, however unlike other times, I didn't use a guide whatsoever this time around, as I quickly picked up on what I needed to do, although I did have to reset my game cause I messed up the secret run.
I didn't find the mouse controls to be as finnicky, but they still acted up from time to time. This mostly happens when you are interacting with an area that has a lot of items/locations you can look at and the game sort of doesn't understand where you want to go unless you click a pixel perfect location which sometime doesn't happen, but it wasn't nowhere near as bad as Paradox.
Also of course it wouldn't be a Rusty Lake game if there weren't secrets you can find and use in other games. In this game it's in the form of a side objective which is like bonus puzzles you need to solve to unlock them and while I found this to be much harder than the main objective, it was really a fun bonus if you want something to increase the difficulty.
Verdict:
Rusty Lake Hotel is a great little adventure with a morbid little story. The puzzles this time around are even more well thought out and I had a blast solving them and I'm more invested in the story now more than ever and for 2 bucks this is an absolute steal.
Final Rating:
9/10
Pros:
+ The puzzle design is really top notch
+ Story is a morbid, yet intriguing tale
+ Pretty decent audio design
+ Art style is as good as it ever was
Cons:
- Some audio crunch when characters speak
- Mouse controls do act up when there's many items in close proximity
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