I’m about to spoil one of the puzzles in this game. Even though it doesn’t reveal anything about the plot, I feel obligated to give a warning regardless, but there is a reason for it.
Your task is to flip two electrical switches, but flipping them individually causes a failure, so you have to flip both at the same time. If you’re playing on an original DS, this is trivial, just use the stylus and a finger to flip them simultaneously, but on an emulator it gets pretty tricky. If you’re just using the mouse to emulate a stylus, how are you supposed to touch two places at once? Truly, this is the real puzzle, and the key is that the DS touchscreen could only handle one contact point at a time. If it detected multiple presses, it would average their locations. So, to fool the game into thinking you’re lifting both switches, you have to start swiping up on one switch, then swipe in between them where no switch actually exists, to trick the game into thinking the DS hardware is averaging the two inputs.
The reason for explaining all that is twofold. Firstly, I want people to play this game, and I almost got stuck there until I found the answer on a forum post from 2010. Secondly, it’s a perfect example of why preservation for games has to be an active effort. I played on my DS all the time, but I had forgotten about how it handled multi-touch inputs, so what if someone 30 years from now who had never even seen a DS before wants to play Hotel Dusk? If I didn’t find any answers online, I could have just charged my old DS and tried things out for myself, but what happens when those forums are shut down and DS hardware becomes scarce? Gods forbid, what if Gamefaqs shuts down and the other puzzles that rely on hardware gimmicks become completely opaque to the player of the future?
An easy solution may seem to be avoiding gimmicks altogether, but it’s impossible to determine what will constitute a gimmick from the eyes of the future. The touchscreen problem here is actually a great example, seeing as how a touchscreen is the only input method for the mobile games of today, but was a novelty back in 2007. On one side, developers should take whatever measures they can to ensure games can be enjoyed with a variety of control styles. Not only does this help future players, but it could have accessibility benefits as well. Some people don’t have the luxury of holding a controller in the common two-handed way, and some might find that holding a stylus steadily is impossible, and ideally both sets of people should get to enjoy the games they want to enjoy. On the other side, I want to shout out the people who write guides for these old games and pour their effort into emulation passion projects, preserving games even after the companies who created them are long gone. I’m passionate about games as a medium, so I’m glad people are working so tirelessly for its historical and artistic preservation. If you're one of those heroes, genuinely, thank you.
Oh, shit, I hardly talked about the game itself. Well, visual novel, noir, detective stuff. Protagonist is so impatient that he made me laugh a lot, I had a great time. Lots of frame drops, but still playable. Fun characters, good mystery, like how it answers all your questions but doesn’t necessarily resolve all of them so you leave satisfied, but with something to think about. Great rotoscoped pencil animation. Give it a go.
Your task is to flip two electrical switches, but flipping them individually causes a failure, so you have to flip both at the same time. If you’re playing on an original DS, this is trivial, just use the stylus and a finger to flip them simultaneously, but on an emulator it gets pretty tricky. If you’re just using the mouse to emulate a stylus, how are you supposed to touch two places at once? Truly, this is the real puzzle, and the key is that the DS touchscreen could only handle one contact point at a time. If it detected multiple presses, it would average their locations. So, to fool the game into thinking you’re lifting both switches, you have to start swiping up on one switch, then swipe in between them where no switch actually exists, to trick the game into thinking the DS hardware is averaging the two inputs.
The reason for explaining all that is twofold. Firstly, I want people to play this game, and I almost got stuck there until I found the answer on a forum post from 2010. Secondly, it’s a perfect example of why preservation for games has to be an active effort. I played on my DS all the time, but I had forgotten about how it handled multi-touch inputs, so what if someone 30 years from now who had never even seen a DS before wants to play Hotel Dusk? If I didn’t find any answers online, I could have just charged my old DS and tried things out for myself, but what happens when those forums are shut down and DS hardware becomes scarce? Gods forbid, what if Gamefaqs shuts down and the other puzzles that rely on hardware gimmicks become completely opaque to the player of the future?
An easy solution may seem to be avoiding gimmicks altogether, but it’s impossible to determine what will constitute a gimmick from the eyes of the future. The touchscreen problem here is actually a great example, seeing as how a touchscreen is the only input method for the mobile games of today, but was a novelty back in 2007. On one side, developers should take whatever measures they can to ensure games can be enjoyed with a variety of control styles. Not only does this help future players, but it could have accessibility benefits as well. Some people don’t have the luxury of holding a controller in the common two-handed way, and some might find that holding a stylus steadily is impossible, and ideally both sets of people should get to enjoy the games they want to enjoy. On the other side, I want to shout out the people who write guides for these old games and pour their effort into emulation passion projects, preserving games even after the companies who created them are long gone. I’m passionate about games as a medium, so I’m glad people are working so tirelessly for its historical and artistic preservation. If you're one of those heroes, genuinely, thank you.
Oh, shit, I hardly talked about the game itself. Well, visual novel, noir, detective stuff. Protagonist is so impatient that he made me laugh a lot, I had a great time. Lots of frame drops, but still playable. Fun characters, good mystery, like how it answers all your questions but doesn’t necessarily resolve all of them so you leave satisfied, but with something to think about. Great rotoscoped pencil animation. Give it a go.