Hotel Dusk designers unveil new game.
Hotel Dusk was one of my favorite Nintendo DS games. Anyone who’s played the game may be able to tell that from the Kyle Hyde avatar I use here. It is generally regarded as the best game released by Cing, a developer best known for a string of visual novel-type adventure games released on Nintendo platforms which included most prominently Hotel Dusk and Another Code (aka Trace Memory). Unfortunately, I don’t think Cing ever really found commercial success, and their doors were closed in 2010.
Hotel Dusk tells the story of Kyle Hyde, a detective in search of his long missing partner, Brian Bradley, and whose investigation leads him to check in to the decaying Hotel Dusk outside of Los Angeles. The game is exclusively set in the rundown hotel, and its guests and staff serve as the cast of characters. In some ways, Hotel Dusk can be thought of like a more serious, more story-focused Professor Layton game. Kyle spends his time exploring the hotel, secretly searching for clues, while also engaging the other guests in conversation. As the night wears on, Kyle increasingly begins to realize that, although the guests are strangers to one another, they all have profoundly interconnected histories and fates. Often, Kyle encounters brainteaser-like puzzles that must be solved to progress the story, but it is not nearly as puzzle-focused as the Layton games.
Kyle Hyde of Hotel Dusk
A sequel to Kyle Hyde’s story was later released in Japan and Europe, and I’ve regrettably never played it. Cing would go bankrupt shortly after release, and that would be that. Recently though, former Cing talent have resurfaced with a new game slated for the Japanese 3DS eshop entitled (here goes) –Chase-: Unsolved Cases Investigation Division – Distant Memories. This new title promises to be a mystery novel game in the same vain of Hotel Dusk. Unfortunately, nothing’s been announced yet in the way of localization, and the game is currently Japan-only.
Chase’s main character also looks a bit familiar:
Am I crazy or does he look like a Japanese version of Kyle Hyde?
The stories that Cing told always felt very idiosyncratic and unique to me. Both fate and the weight of the past play heavy roles, both as themes and actors, in their tales. I’m very much hoping we’ll see an English localization of the game down the road, but I’m afraid I have no certainty that we will. But …. it does make me feel like Kyle Hyde looking to reunite with his old friend from the past.
Posted on March 15, 2016, in News and tagged 3DS, Cing, Hotel Dusk, Nintendo, Video Games. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
The Maximum Utmost 
Exciting! I loved Hotel Dusk. Nice to know the team is still around, doing interesting things.
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I didn’t play either of the Hotel Dusk games but I did play Another Code: R for Wii, also by Cing and another Europe/Japan-only game… shame it was so utterly bleh. A real disappointment. I’ve got another Cing game, Glass Rose for PS2 sitting around waiting to be played, that’s a real oddity from what I’ve seen. The main character is based on the likeness of a J-pop star, while the plot involves the protagonist, a journalist, time traveling to the 1920s…?
Anyway what got me interested in trying all of these games in the first place was the fact that Cing developed Little King’s Story, which is a superb game. But none of their other games resemble LKS in the slightest!
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Cing was definitely a hit or miss group. After Hotel Dusk, their final game released in the US was Again, which was just an utterly headache inducing visual novel game.
I only recently learned about Glass Rose, though. Never realized before that they had a history before the Wii and DS.
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Little King’s Story was brilliant – definitely one of the best and most underrated games on the Wii!
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I have not played Hotel Dusk, but it looks like a very interesting game. It seems unusual for Nintendo to release a more mature game using actual locations (even other mature games released by Nintendo seem to be set in fictional places). I have wondered with this sort of game (which are plot-focussed and require the player to take part in conversations and perform simple actions to solve a mystery) is whether they are still enjoyable to replay? It seems like the game uses a mystery to entice the player to play the game, but, when the player knows the solution, the game seems like it could lose it’s attraction. The title of the new game suggests it is set in the past, is this a theme with the earlier game?
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I didn’t know what your avatar was from until stumbling across this post.
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