THE SPECTRUM RETREAT
This Test Dummy has a few neat tricks up its sleeve
After winning the BAFTA Young Game Designer award back in 2016 for an intriguing prototype that revolved around colour switching puzzles, Dan Smith returns with the final coalescence of that initial build in The Spectrum Retreat. Here, we find the compelling core greatly expanded and now cushioned by a story. In an upmarket hotel called The Penrose, you are attended by a procession of mannequins, while a voice from beyond its walls insists something isn’t quite right. Cooper, your woman on the outside, guides you through picking away at The Penrose’s facade, revealing not only that you can’t leave but that you don’t actually remember ever checking in. Under Cooper’s guidance, you explore the ersatz establishment in order to remember your past and eventually escape.
The final reveal does not quite live up to the initial mystery. The story you uncover revolves around an illness and the devastation wreaked by the bureaucracy of health insurance plans. Other than the odd memory seeping into a puzzle area, the plot and problem-solving elements are largely separate. We talked to Smith about the game back in OPM#149, and, when playing, it’s obvious the narrative was added later in development. While it was included to emotionally invest players in its puzzles, the two sides of this coin feel divorced from one another.
RAINBOW WARRIOR
To escape you need to succeed at a number of Authentication Challenges. Juggling a number of colours, ‘holding’ the right one lets you pass through colour-coded gates. Initially getting to grips with this is a lot of fun. You can switch colours between yourself and colour-holding cubes so long as they’re in your line of sight and not beyond a gate. The early test chambers – er, Authentication Challenges – play with this in such a way that you’re never stuck for long, though you’re never starved of that exhilarating ‘Aha!’ moment either.
Later puzzles are far more complicated. Gravity and teleportation mechanics are introduced in the last act, expanding the core formula, but also making things incredibly frustrating. For example, due to the unpolished physics, teleporting during a late-game puzzle bounced me off a wall into an instant-death pit. This was particularly controllerhurling-worthy as these larger areas don’t have mid-challenge checkpoints, so when you die you have to redo the multi-step solution from the beginning.
The expedient shortcuts in its presentation are obvious, a masterclass in the economical use of limited resources, from the stylishly sparse environments to the creepy mannequins which only move their heads as their gaze follows you. But from dodgy physics to a story that comes across as a last-minute addition, it’s missing a final layer of polish.
VERDICT
“GRAVITY AND TELEPORTATION MECHANICS ARE INTRODUCED IN THE LAST ACT.”
What’s here, while less fully formed in some areas than others, is still an impressive show from a developer working more or less alone. Jess Kinghorn