I got about 85% into the game and decided to throw in the towel because I was having so little fun. Despite being advertised as a puzzle game, there's really not a lot of puzzling here. Most puzzles are just entering a room with a lock, and then looking around and reading a letter where a number is underlined and you simply put the number into the lock. In some rooms there might be a slight decoding step with converting a number into hours on a clock, or having to tilt your head to see a hidden number, or typing one of the 3 dates that keep appearing. By and large all the puzzles follow this formula, and when it feels like it doesn't and you finally find the solution, it's rarely some interesting deduction and more like a click of the tongue kind of moment. As someone who loves puzzle games and plays them all the time, this does not exhibit the typical behavior you see in good puzzle games, of introducing a set of mechanics and exploring their possibility space and showcasing you the interesting and surprising outcomes. So, as a puzzle game, I think it barely qualifies, and the puzzles that are there often feel dumb or frustrating.
That by itself might still make for an okay gaming experience, but I find that the game violates a lot of the trust with the player and it makes solving puzzles really frustrating. First of all, despite what I said earlier, the game has a habit of throwing puzzles at you that you don't yet have the information to solve. Near the beginning of the game you unlock this room with a nearly comatose woman and are prompted to whisper names to her to get a reaction from her. Every time I heard a new name come up at any point in the story I went to the old woman and whispered the name, and nothing. Time and time again, dozens of times over 20 hours I went there, and nothing. So many puzzles in the game are introduced and you won't have the tools to solve them until many hours later, with no signposting as to what is solvable and what isn't. You'll bang your head against a thing, wondering if you're missing something, only to find out later you didn't even have all the information. Not only is all this trial and error disrespectful of the player, the way in which you do it is painfully slow, with the hotel having a labyrinthine layout, and your character walking slow as molasses. Later in the game you unlock the ability to run, but it only works for like 5 minutes and then you have to go and "recharge" your run. There's a bunch of other little ways in which the game wastes your time, but I will spare you.
So okay, lots of busy work, puzzles not very fun, but there's a story here, right? Is that cool? Well, I personally didn't find it very interesting. It's confusingly told, and often requires you to read boring correspondence and piece together cryptic visions. 20 hours in, I can't confidently describe to you the entire plot of the game, and I don't feel especially compelled to keep playing to learn more.
The one thing this game does pretty well is the visuals. It's very stylish and there's a cool technique with texture sampling that I haven't seen in a game before. It genuinely has a great presentation. I just wish I could say the same about what it's like to play it.
