The Norwood Suite brought me new discoveries with every room. With his free-to-play 2015 release, Off-Peak, NYC musician and developer Cosmo D brought his electric, off-the-cuff style of jazz to game space. That energy is focused and brought to life in new ways in The Norwood Suite, one of the best first-person experience games(walking sim, if you prefer) since 2015's The Beginner's Guide. Strictly speaking, you progress through the game by performing menial tasks for the clientele and staff at The Norwood Suite, a demented hotel tucked among the evergreens in the rural sprawl around NYC. But the game’s charm lies in the setting and characters, a storied hotel with intrigue, Dadaist absurdity, and architecture that gleefully folds in on itself. The story goes...places, but it's the music that will constantly nip at your heels (literally, the music always manifests in the world through speakers peppering the estate), guiding you from hall to hall in a world where internet modems have eyes, voices are interpreted as freeform instrumentals, and Red Bull has taken over the world. It's the best world to get lost in, where musical and visual discovery await at every turn.

Reviewed on Jan 26, 2024


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