This bed we made
Cleaning up.
In This Bed We Made you play as Sophie, a maid in a 1950s hotel. But if you’re looking for an immersive maid sim you’ll be disappointed. But if you’re looking for a nosy amateur detective adventure where you get to indulge your inner snoop you’ll find a great little game here.
Considering how much shady activity they’re involved in, the guests of the Clarington hotel are incredibly careless about leaving out incriminating correspondence, detailed records of debts unpaid, and all sorts of juicy puzzle pieces that you slowly slot together to create a picture of the room’s occupant.
The game is told in flashback, framed by Sophie’s interrogation by a police detective. You can choose to throw away certain objects and notes you find, which some squares might call ‘evidence tampering’.
It’s not just the beds you can leave in a bad state either, as it’s easy to be careless about covering your tracks when snooping. After so many detective games have let me trample all over crime scenes consequence-free, it’s refreshing to play something that rewards a considerate approach. A few puzzles are introduced, such as a cipher that needs to be cracked, riddles that need to be solved for a locker combination, etc. Fun enough, but the real puzzle is how all the evidence you’re gathering fits together.
Its on-screen characters are great too. Beth on the reception desk is the sharp-tongued best friend you always wish you’d had. The game captures the tedium and tiny joys of the workplace really well, crucially without ever slipping into being tedious itself.
I finished my first playthrough with satisfying answers to a lot of the game’s mysteries, but not all, and certainly didn’t feel as if justice had been served. When you’ve finished weeping, remember that a replay of a short experience to see if you can course correct is a far more tantalising prospect. Especially when it’s a detective game debut as accomplished as this one.
VERDICT
A short and sweet amateur detective game that plays like a spiritual successor to the marvellous Gone Home.
Abbie Stone
PRICE Free PLATFORM PC, browser WEB twitwi.itch.io/risingup
RISING UP
ANGER IS AN ENERGY IN THIS LURID BRAWLER.
In the cheekily titled Rising Up a malfunctioning printer breaks down in this sidescrolling action game, and you, an office worker, loses his rag and goes on a rampage.
If you’re familiar with Streets of
Rage, this plays almost exactly the same. Enemies (as in your co-workers) attack you, and you defeat them to advance across the stage. What stands out here is the pixel art, which realises the heightened, comic violence of the premise with exquisite attention to detail. Take any frame of animation – from the cluttered desks in the background to the chaos happening in the foreground – and you could frame it and hang it on the wall.
It’s not a huge game, but you would need to replay it to see everything. Little jokes in the background that you might not notice as you’re being whomped, or the bespoke animations as you fight. The team behind Streets of
Rage didn’t put this much work into a single stage, so in terms of pixel art at least, this is a feast.
VERDICT
Mechanically, it’s a simpler game than even the first Streets of Rage.
Tom Sykes