[h1]Overview:[/h1]
'[i]Hotel on the Grate[/i]' is a first person walking simulator that mostly relies on narrative gameplay which involves reading text and dialogue more often than anything else. You play as a therapist sent into a strange city and an even stranger hotel where you meet and greet your clients asking them about their lives and such. It's a very trippy experience as well as a short one clocking out at around 15 minutes and even less if you're a fast reader. The developer reiterates multiple times that the game is short to the point where I feel as though they [i][b]really[/b][/i] want to make it clear to the players that this game is in fact, short. The game itself would only really appeal to a certain audience who are very open to new experiences. There aren't many games like this and there's a reason for that, the niche for games like this is small and would only really seem interesting to people who enjoy just simply walking around and appreciating the environment and care little about visual detail and game length. Personally, I enjoyed the experience because I fit all the criteria mentioned but my point remains.
[h1]Gameplay:[/h1]
'[i]Hotel on the Grate[/i]' is a walking simulator, inside and out. All you do is walk around and talk to people for a brief moment before eventually going back home. This is essentially where the game ends and you're returned to the title screen. That's literally it and although it's true that the game doesn't necessarily have much to offer, it also doesn't mean that the game is in any way bad. The characters you meet range from being odd, creepy, depressing to even being so insignificant that you have no words to describe them. You ask the same questions to almost everyone you meet and receive different responses. Whether or not the dialogue is interesting is up to the player but I for one didn't find them particularly interesting but also didn't find them particularly boring. Each encounter was unique in their own respect but I honestly felt as if not much thought was put into them.
That being said, I still believe the characters in the game were given enough depth in their personalities for the player to understand what kind of people they were. Given the length of the game, that's actually pretty good considering there isn't a lot of screen time for these individuals to pour out their entire life story. The only kind of disappointing thing about '[i]Hotel on the Grate[/i]' is that you don't really get to [i]be[/i] a therapist since all you do is just talk to your clients. You don't get to give them advice or help them with their troubles. There aren't any dialogue options that affect the story and there are no choices the player can make that impact the overall game and story. Regardless of that, '[i]Hotel on the Grate[/i]' is still a nice little walking simulator with some sub-par dialogue.
[h1]Controls:[/h1]
Simple and easy to get a hang of. As mentioned, all you do is walk around and interact with people. There aren't any issues hovering around the ability to play the game and everything works and the game plays perfectly fine. The only gripe I have (which is a minor one) is that at the end of every dialogue you activate, you have to always manually click the "Goodbye..." option at the bottom right corner of the dialogue box which makes leaving a conversation a step more complicated. It's trivial for sure but just having the conversation end automatically like most games would have been much more convenient and smoother.
[h1]Graphics:[/h1]
Possibly some of the most trippy, strange and psychedelic styles I've ever seen ever in a game and that's saying quite a lot. It's like '[i]Hotel on the Grate[/i]' tried to combine visual styles from a hundred games into one and what they got was this. It's honestly a hit or miss because on one hand, the game looks absolutely horrifying, the characters wacky, abstract and resemble things children draw in their notebooks when trying to describe the nightmare they had last night. Doors and walls plastered with wallpaper only people tripping on acid would find appealing and buildings and other environmental objects created with so little attention to detail that it's essentially left to the player to determine what said objects are. "[i]Is that a couch? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, that's a couch[/i]".
But on the other hand, '[i]Hotel on the Grate[/i]' is also a game that essentially looks like no other game, or maybe a bunch of games jumbled together. The graphics are trippy for sure and the colors aren't necessarily the most popular among most people, but it's also what makes the game unique. For me, I really don't mind games not looking realistic or paying a lot of attention to detail and actually found '[i]Hotel on the Grate[/i]' to scratch an itch I tend to have when it comes to walking simulators: a unique, odd and abstract experience that also relies heavily on visual looks on top of narrative gameplay and implements it well. It's one of those cases of "Love it or hate it" and fortunately, I love it.
[h1]Audio:[/h1]
Similar to the graphics, the audio is also a hit or miss but it definitely leans more towards the latter. There are quite a few tracks in the game and each room has its own unique soundtrack but many if not all of them sound let's just say, not so pleasant. I could instantly tell the developer attempted to create unsettling, uncomfortable and trippy soundtracks to accommodate the bizarre world and actually did a damn good job at it. But that's the issue, they accomplished it well but that's exactly what makes the audio so unbearable. For the purpose of their tone, it's a good combination; the soundtracks pair very well with their corresponding environments and I welcome them with open arms. But they sound terrible and judging them from a quality perspective, these are not of that.
[h1]Conclusion/TL;DR:[/h1]
'[i]Hotel on the Grate[/i]' is a very short first person narrative walking simulator where you play as a therapist walking around a hotel in a psychedelic world talking to clients about their lives. The dialogues themselves are pretty short and there are a handful of people to interact with. Aside from that there's nothing else going on for the game and it caters to a very specific audience. If you enjoy unsettling, unique and uncomfortable visuals and audio, narrative games and walking simulators and care little to none about game length, this might be up your alley. But that's a relatively specific checklist to turn that light green but if it [i]does[/i] all check out, '[i]Hotel on the Grate[/i]' is a nice little experience and asks for nothing but your time and even then, very little of it.
