Not to toot my own trumpet or anything, but I’ve got a 2x2m square in my house that might be the most impossible 2x2m square anyone has ever seen. Granted, I’m not familiar with all 2x2m squares in the world, and I’m sure there are some corkers out there, but I’ve spent the last few days in mine and – goodness – have I experienced some things. I should probably explain.
Hotel Infinity is the latest game from Studio Chyr, the developer behind Manifold Garden, one of 2019’s best, most thoroughly confounding puzzlers. That game was an ode to impossible spaces, its vast recursive planes folding endlessly back and forth in a furious bamboozlement of your puzzling prowess. Hotel Infinity (out now on PSVR2 and Meta Quest) is equally enamoured with discombobulating geometry, setting players loose in an eerily deserted, richly atmospheric five-star hotel – all warm wood tones and soothing gramophone jazz – that flatly refuses to abide by the fundamental laws of physics. Corridors twist in on themselves, ever-descending elevators somehow end up back where they started, cavernous rooms casually invert, and you might just catch a glimpse of yourself if you round a corner fast enough. It’s wild – even more so as it’s all in VR.
Disregarding the spatial theatrics for a moment though, Hotel Infinity is a puzzle game, and you’ll primarily interact with its world via your floating digital hands, using them to yank levers, slide bolts, spin cranks, and manipulate items in familiar 1:1 fashion. Probably wisely, Studio Chyr reigns in the surrealism where its puzzles are concerned, opting for an approachable difficulty that keeps the pace swift and the giddying environmental set-pieces coming. But that doesn’t mean puzzles aren’t engaging; there’s a pleasing physicality as you mix drinks in the hotel’s lounge bar, plonk at a piano to solve strange equations, or peer through an imaginary magnifying glass to reveal invisible clues – but, more importantly, they’re all given a presentational twist befitting their impossible surroundings. In itself, rifling through drawers to find a key might not be the most thrilling of tasks, but when one of those drawers contains another drawer which slides upward to reveal a full-sized bookshelf on which sits a tiny cupboard containing another drawer holding the key – well, it elevates the whole affair.
But as handsomely staged as its conundrums may be, they’re probably the least interesting thing about Hotel Infinity. And it’s here we get back to that 2x2m square. Studio Chyr has built Hotel Infinity around roomscale movement, which essentially means you use your feet rather than a control stick to navigate its environments – so, if you want to, say, reach a distant table, you need to shift your legs and physically walk there. And it’s brilliantly transporting. Roomscale movement isn’t new, by any means, but Hotel Infinity’s implementation feels especially ingenious and absolutely fundamental to its success – to the point where I’m comfortable saying if you’re considering getting it to play using the alternative stationary control scheme, don’t even bother. Sure, that means the most challenging puzzle you’re likely to face – if your home is as cramped as mine – is clearing enough space to play, but it’s worth it.
Hotel Infinity’s disdain for spatial coherence means Studio Chyr can do some clever stuff within that 2x2m square. You begin, for instance, by entering the hotel through its revolving door, its opulent (albeit low-poly) lobby stretching out before you – grand balcony circling an enormous chandelier above, abandoned suitcases stacked high to be spirited away to unseen corners, a reception desk far beyond. It’s a massive virtual environment, far bigger than 2x2m, but that’s okay; a rope cordon guides you gently to the left, and suddenly, impossibly, a passageway opens out where a wall should be. You swing on in and continue forward, emerging – unexpectedly – midway across the lobby. And Chyr builds its entire game out of these spatial contrivances, creating a world which allows you to keep on walk-walk-walking – along corridors, around corners, through guest rooms and palatial dining halls – without ever leaving that 2x2m square. It’s a fiendishly clever bit of sleight-of-hand and the sense of scale, as you explore the hotel seemingly unbounded, is immense.
Nor can I get enough of its inventive, geometry confounding set-pieces. You’ll take an elevator ride through strange liminal spaces, the endless hallways glimpsed through its shutter door giving way to sudden exteriors plunging down to dizzying depths; you’ll twist through labyrinthine hallways; pass windows revealing increasingly disorientating unrealities beyond – the kind of architectural anomalies that might give Escher an uneasy thrill. Elsewhere, hallways bifurcate impassably, requiring you to manipulate contraptions and bring their vast halves back into alignment around you, or you’ll cross a dizzying expanse by shifting the far wall up close so you can hitch a ride as it snaps back into its original position.
I absolutely bloody love it. And honestly, I’ve got a lot of time for VR gaming as a whole, but – perhaps because I’m more of an occasional VR tourist than perma-helmeted fan – it feels increasingly rare to come across a virtual reality game that manages to use the tech in a way that can properly, creatively wow. Hotel Infinity, though, is a treat; a delightful bit of alchemy squeezed into a two by two square. And in the same year I fell in love with Fireproof Studios’ brilliant narrative adventure Ghost Town, it feels great to be excited about VR again.
