This device, most especially the use of callbacks to domestic scenes and playroom objects, now feels like it’s run its course in gaming narratives. The place is suffering from some kind of catastrophic glitching, which allows for story devices to clue me into What’s Really Going On Here. I am stuck inside the hotel, with only robotic staff for company. The Spectrum Retreat is set in a digital hotel gone wrong. If the puzzles offer a decent challenge, the game’s narrative casing falls short. It can be extremely frustrating at the end of a large level, which must then be traversed again and again.

This feels like a design flaw, but is so prevalent that I’m tempted to view it more as a kind of a sharp in-game punishment. The Spectrum Retreat Dan Smith Gamesįor example, I often found myself making an error and becoming trapped in the puzzle, having to restart the level from scratch. There’s a devilry in this that I sometimes enjoy, but sometimes not. Puzzles are often exploratory, requiring that I make mistakes in order to reveal the true answers. It’s the sort of game that’s fun to play for an hour, and then leave for a while.Īlthough simple at first, the difficulty builds up significantly about midway through the game, as more colors, tricks and devices are introduced. The puzzles don’t have anything like the charm or originality of the Portal series, but they do offer intrigue and satisfaction. It’s a neat idea that’s mostly executed well. In its first-person view, the player is also part of the puzzle, becoming one of the colors by touching objects and so swapping their hues.

It’s a puzzle game that presents a series of rooms which must be escaped by figuring out the convoluted logic of colored boxes, bridges, ramps and gadgets. The Spectrum Retreat does for colors what Portal did for physics.

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