"The name's Kyle Hyde. I used to be a New York cop, but three years ago I gave up my badge..."
Hotel Dusk, the titular setting for the game, is a run-down third rate hotel located well off the beaten path in the Southwestern US. Hotel Dusk is rife with secrets, including a ghost story, an unsolved kidnapping, mysterious locked doors, and a room that grants wishes. Its flickering neon sign calls to mind the Bates Motel and other seedy joints made famous by mystery novels and films. In addition to this, it is also the latest destination of Kyle Hyde, a former NYPD detective turned door-to-door salesman after he was fired for shooting his partner, the enigmatic Brian Bradley.
Kyle Hyde is the protagonist of the story, a gruff mannered, down-and-out loner with a scraggly goatee and a checkered past. It is Hyde's niggling suspicion that Bradley is still alive that has led him into his new profession. Though ostensibly a salesman, Hyde's police background gives him the skills necessary to assist with his employer's sideline business: the discreet recovery of certain missing articles. It is this second, clandestine, work that brings Hyde to the Dusk. He is there to uncover several seemingly insignificant items, but every turn leads him to some detail connected with his past and the search for Bradley. The player initially knows little about the events of Hyde's previous career, a series of brief flashbacks shows over and over the climactic shooting on the banks of the Hudson, but much of the background is still missing. It is up to the player to uncover the true events of the past, what really happened to Bradley and why.
This investigation will be undertaken largely as an exploration of Hotel Dusk. The player holds the DS sideways to navigate the hotel, an exercise which puts its dual screen functionality to good use. The touch screen shows an overhead map of the area, with a 3D view of the surroundings on the left-hand (ordinarily top) screen. The player guides Hyde around the maps using the stylus, with options to zoom in to closely investigate any suspicious areas. This portion of the game is very much in the tradition of the classic point-and-click adventure, with the basic mechanic being to tap the stylus on certain highlight-able objects to hear Hyde's observations on them. Some items can be obtained and added to inventory where they will be used as keys in future puzzles, while other objects are dismissed with a cursory (often snide) comment. There are also occasional uses of DS specific techniques, such as scraping or peeling with the stylus or flipping the DS closed to bring an object on the right-hand screen in contact with an object on the left side, but for the most part the simple tap-to-examine method suffices.
The second component to the exploration of Hotel Dusk is the interactions Hyde can have with the hotel staff and other guests. These interactions take place mostly through dialog. The conversations are fairly linear, with Hyde getting the occasional opportunity to interrupt and ask a question, or storing away a keyword or detail to ask more about later. These instances give the player several choices as to which questions to ask or what sort of reaction to emphasize. For instance, when a character reacts strongly to hearing the name "Kyle Hyde" you'll have the opportunity to ask a penetrating question or remark cheekily, "What now, you don't like my name?" In these situations, one answer is likely to get you more information than the other. Skillfully navigating these conversations is the key to drawing out the secrets hidden at Hotel Dusk.
At first glance, the cast of supporting characters calls to mind the stock characters from a generic mystery novel, including the over-talkative cook and housekeeper, Rosa; the ten year old hooligan, Melissa, who tears through the hotel leaving chaos in her wake; and the pretentiously verbose Martin Summer, an author of dubious fame and even more dubious talent. As the story progresses and Hyde begins to interact more deeply with these characters, they reveal far more complexity than what first meets the eye. While the deep, dark secrets each character is hoarding can be a little over the top at times, by the time all is said and done they're a likable and well-written bunch you'll be sorry to say goodbye to.
The game's art style lends itself wonderfully to the story and atmosphere. Drab, generic looking 3D backgrounds highlight the oppressive feeling of the hotel, while the more artistic 2D character designs further enhance the already impressive personalities that inhabit the Dusk. The characters appear like animated pencil sketches highlighted occasionally with subtle washes of color, which for the most part are remarkably fluid and realistic looking. A few of the younger female characters have a jarring anime look which doesn't quite mesh with the otherwise consistent design. The game's soundtrack is equally impressive, with intense jazz styled pieces befitting the gumshoe theme dominating the score. Sound effects are polished and appropriate, if not exactly revolutionary.
The game does have a few drawbacks. It is slow-paced, especially in the early stages, most of the puzzles are easily solved, and a few of the "twists" in the plot are obvious to the player long before Hyde figures them out. Trudging from place to place to unearth clues that will slowly lead Hyde to the conclusion you jumped to ages ago does get frustrating at times. It's at these moments when Hyde exclaims to himself "I never saw that coming!" that you may find yourself wanting to take a swing at him. Another distraction is that occasionally in the course of dialog, a wrong answer leads to an immediate game over. The right answer isn't always intuitive or even logical, so it can be punishing to be forced to pick an answer and then presented with a game over screen. This is especially true due to the easy nature of most of the other puzzles, it's hard to be prepared for the seemingly arbitrary life-or-death choices. Lastly, the game doesn't have much to offer on replay. Once you know how the story ends there's not much else to do. Since it's a fairly short game, this means you're unlikely to get more than ten or so hours of play out of it.
These shortcomings aside, though, Hotel Dusk is a satisfyingly complex visual novel that combines DS-centric gameplay with the point-and-click nostalgia of the old-school adventure genre. It is engrossing, appealing, and outright hard to put down. Even if you're not usually a fan of adventure games, with its great storytelling, self-aware humor, and a unique artistic flair, Hotel Dusk is a decidedly enjoyable game and well worth a look.