The Spectrum Retreat | Xbox One | Review

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Sometimes it’s difficult to explain exactly why something is so good without (in this case literally) giving the game away. With that in mind, rest assured that The Spectrum Retreat could well be the strongest contender for my personal Game of the Year so far.

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by James
Michael
​Parry

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​@James_Parry

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Developer: Dan Smith
Studios
Publisher: Ripstone
Platforms: Xbox One,
PS4, Switch, PC
Players: 1

It might sound like hyperbole, as that isn’t a claim to make lightly, but exploring the Penrose Hotel kept me captivated enough to justify a return visit in order to secure the elusive second ending and the remainder of the game’s achievements, which anyone who knows this reviewer’s track record should be aware is truly the rarest of occasions.

You’d be forgiven for wondering what’s so special about a hotel, but this one has more than a few tricks up its sleeve. You play Alex, a lone protagonist in an apparently empty hotel, whose only friends amount to cheerful-but-creepy, mannequin-shaped staff that are eager to cater for your every whim, and the slightly more pragmatic, but still robotic, manager and mysterious voice-on-the-end-of-a-phone, Cooper.

Like BioShock and Portal before it, the silent lead’s journey is mostly plotted out by a faceless voice - and veterans of those series’ know such voices are not always to be trusted. Revealing whether that’s the case here would be to spoil the fun, but we can confirm that Cooper beautifully sets the stage for the mystery of why you find yourself at the Penrose to begin with. A hotel, it should be noted, that spins you back inside if you try to stroll out of its revolving front door.

“This all sounds jolly interesting, but where’s the game part?” You’d also be forgiven for asking. As it turns out, there are puzzles aplenty to solve, both while exploring the hotel and venturing into its sub-levels which contrast the Art Deco design with a more futuristic aesthetic, seeing you move colours around to pass through them.

If it’s sounding a little too similar to the likes of Portal (which is by no means a bad thing if our verdict on QUBE 2 is anything to go by), don’t worry yourself too much, as, whilst this is indeed a game with some physics-based puzzles that’s set in the near future, that’s really where the comparisons end.

Lone developer Dan Smith, who was awarded BAFTA Young Games Designer in 2016, has been refining this idea for years and the care and dedication poured into every asset of The Spectrum Retreat can’t be overstated. Not only does it have exceptional production values but perform flawlessly on a technical level, helping to emphasise the stark tonal contrast between the game’s two main environments.

Puzzles are cleverly and integrally woven into the narrative; perhaps better than in any other example, the great Portal included.

There are moments when you can be walking down a hallway and find yourself losing your bearings, certain that a door just turned up in front of you. Your surroundings begin to undertake more significant changes as you progress further into the mystery, and closer to the truth, as expertly realised visual distortions give clues as to where the story will turn next. As events unfold the name of the hotel, “Penrose”, suddenly takes on a more deliberate meaning.

Puzzle sections boast a similarly natural progression, managing to take fundamentally simple mechanics and build them gradually to show you the ropes without a shoehorned tutorial to speak of. The variety from just a few simple mechanics is staggering and provides an ever-increasing challenge the deeper into the rabbit hole you go.

Games often struggle to provide genuinely compelling reason for puzzles to exist within their worlds, but in The Spectrum Retreat there’s no doubt that they’re cleverly and integrally woven into the narrative; perhaps better than in any other example, the great Portal included.

Reaching the story’s conclusion is a fitting and brave cherry that tops a thoroughly compelling journey, delicately unfurled over a four or five hour runtime, emphasising just how much can be said without directly telling the player very much at all.

While you may think you’ve seen it all before with the first-person puzzle genre, The Spectrum Retreat begs you to look again and think about how you’d feel in the protagonist’s situation. The potent combination of story and gameplay places it above anything else I’ve played this year, and the entire package is both effortlessly simple and fantastically detailed. With an asking price of just a tenner, there’s no reason you should miss it. ​

Pros

• Gorgeously detailed Art Deco & contrasting futuristic environments
• Visual storytelling helps to spin a gripping narrative
• Doesn’t hold your hand, instead presenting a considered difficulty curve & structure

Cons

• Once in a while, restarting a challenge can take you back an annoyingly long way
• ​Multiple voiceover prompts can be triggered at once

10/10