Hotel Halloween, by One Boat Crew
Play the game - Twine(Harlowe)
Le Grand Guignol
Hotel Halloween is a collection of short scary games created by young students (of the Seneca Thing group), centred around the theme of horror hotel. We have 8 different rooms, each with a different take on Halloween, or creepy elements, or horror. Overall, it’s pretty diverse and creative!
Room 10 is a simple story, which follows a person on a holiday, given a key to the titular room and finding a pool of blood by the door. Follows a branching sequence in which you either realise you are dead or find a way out. I think there were 3 different (non-repeated) endings to find.
Room 16 is a survival story, in which you decide to relax before the Halloween Quest Game, except there are weird things happening in the room. At every turn, you are given a choice, where your (in)actions will mean life or death. You’ll need a bit of trial and error to get to a Good Ending (there are multiple), and advanced to an unfinished level 2
. Because of the arbitrary consequence of each action, the comedic tone of the writing works pretty well (the Bad Endings line were absurd, in a good way).
Room 102, strangely located underground, is another survival story, where you must escape your room to live. It was a time a bit confusing, which actually makes sense, since it’s all happening in a dream, though we don’t really find out how or why this all happened. I liked the details of the hotel, that made things unsettling.
In Room 113, we play as a werewolf staying at the hotel for a vacation. This hotel is not dangerous for humans, but also magical creatures, which means that with one wrong move, you are out. The consequences are sometimes very sensible (like why would you try to pet a dragon
), and sometimes pretty arbitrary (like checking into the bathroom). But it does so with humour, so that helps.
Room 444 is doll-themed, with a bunch of creepy dolls in various state throughout the room. And you are given an ominous warning if you decide to stay. The writing does a good job at describing the unsettling nature of the dolls, and your transformation if you get too curious. Very creepy.
Room 505 is another escape room situation, where you are magically transported into a dangerous maze, and given binary choices to find the right path and leave. It’s really a coin toss on what you should to pick to get to the end, and I kinda found myself more interested in the Bad Endings after finding a couple (they are pretty funny).
Room 555’s puzzle is centred completely around one very important object, which will determine whether you live or die (in various horrific ways). It reminded me a bit of the towel in HHGG in that sense - there’s no real reason to need it, and yet… Both Good Endings were pretty nice, but the very matter-of-fact plug-the-wall one was very funny in context of the whole.
Room 666 is probably the darkest game of the collection, with a focus on body horror (and I think no “good” endings). The recurrent attention to the eyes really gave me the creep - I kept hoping I wouldn’t have to see it again. It was a good utilisation of the haunted mirror trope, no matter the outcome.