Review: Death Game Hotel
With Death Game Hotel I really wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into but, I knew I had to play it with it coming from Swery – the lead developer of now cult classic Deadly Premonition. I have now participated in Death Games 2000, but was I glad to survive the ordeal?
Release Date: July 11th 2024
Developer: White Owls Inc
Publisher: White Owls Inc
Price: £14.99
Reviewed On: Meta Quest 3
* Access Provided For Review *
#DeathGame2000
It’s 202X AD and with a new level of advanced medical technology the human race has acquired the power of Immortality, however, the only ones who have access to this is the rich old people of the world. All this time the rich are becoming richer by feeding of the poor but, a yearly tournament named Death Game 2000 attracts daredevils to bet their life in exchange for a chance to fulfill their dreams. Winning the tournament gives the victors not only great riches, but the chance to make one of their wishes come true – the only way to enter is by posting #DeathGame2000 on a social media platform of their choice.
A Game of Life and Death
The game comes with both single player and multiplayer modes, with the game longevity really coming from the multiplayer – so hopefully the game can keep an active player base or else it could have a very short life-span. This is due to the single player only offering one of the game modes and following the same path of opponents – even though sixteen people are chosen at random to participate in the game.
Overall there are two games modes with single player being centered around ‘Goblet of the Reaper’. In this mode players are given blood-filled Goblets and some tiles. The players must place their tiles into these goblets without causing the blood to overflow. If the goblet overflows, then your turn is considered unsuccessful and the amount of tiles you placed in that turn will be replaced. The aim is, being the first player to insert all their tiles in the goblets wins.
However, that is just the overview of how the games works in the Death Game 2000. Each played starts with five Body Tokens (eyes, ears, mouth, right hand and left hand) and at the start of each round you must offer up a Body Token, if you lose the round say goodbye to that part of your body. Lose all your body parts and you lose the game, which results in you dropping into a black hole to your death.
The rules of the game are easy to understand after a few rounds. At the start of the round it will display some goblets, which will give you and idea of the capacity of each goblet on the table but, these will be randomised. You will be able to see the capacity of your own two goblets, however, your opponents will be hidden. The capacity of the goblets indicates how many tiles can be placed into the goblet before they overflow. This mode includes twenty different tiles, a normal tile and nineteen tiles with an ability to help you and possibly hinder your enemies – with the only tile counting as more than one being placed into the goblet being the double tile. Some examples of the other tiles are, block which will disable the goblet from being selected for one turn, Flush which will reset the chosen goblets capacity and Snuffer which will extinguish one of candles in the center of the table.
What’s the importance of these candles? If all three candles in the center of table and blown out it will enter sudden death. In this mode it will require each person to offer up another Body Token, meaning that the loser will be two body parts down and closer to defeat. Again the idea in sudden death is to get rid of all your tiles first, however, overflow and you lose instantly.
It’s not quite over yet for rules, you will also get different sort of goblets on the table which hold their own rules. For example: if a red goblet is overflown you will instantly lose that round. Where this might all seem like a lot to take in, don’t worry you do have a tablet that shows information on all the tiles and goblets – meaning you don’t need to hold in all this information.
The final element is cheats that are made available to the players, with five cheats being available in total. These are all linked to the body parts you offer up, so if you lose that body part the ability to use that cheat will be removed. These can help you see the capacity of one of the face down goblets not in play, which will help you in trying to work out what the capacity of your opponents goblets are, get an idea of when another player is going to use a cheat, block them from using a cheat for one turn, insert a tile without the risk of overflowing and evade another players accusation once.
Multiplayer with play out in the same loop for ‘Goblet of the Reaper’ but, you will be using chips rather than Body Tokens. However, if Sudden Death is initiated any player who hasn’t folded will have to offer up a Body Token. A difference for your Body Tokens in multiplayer is your will be able to recover them by allowing recovery time (ten-minutes), buy it back using Gold Nuggets (which you earn by winning rounds), stealing the other players by winning or by successfully accusing them of cheating.
The other game mode in multiplayer is ‘Death Poker’ which will play out like Texas Hold’em. However, the team have added a few changes to make it different for Death Game Hotel. Only the A-10 cards are used and there is a fifth suit (Death Suit). A Death Suit card is stronger than any hand without one, however, if you have a Death Suit and don’t make a hand with it you will lose, never mind how strong that hand is.
There is also Sudden Death in this mode as well, where players can lose a body part. This can be activated in two ways, by the candles being extinguished on the table, with one being blown out every time a Death Suit is found among the community cards or a player bets a Body Token. Again all players that have chosen to fold already are not involved in the Sudden Death round – the difference being all active players will get the option to fold when it is activated in this mode.
Players can also use cheats in the game, these come in the form of peeking at the next community card, pick up on potential cheaters, evade being accused of cheating for one time, exchange a card from your hand with a new one or expose a gambler performing a cheat minigame. Again these are all linked to a set body part and if you lose that part you can no longer perform that cheat.
As with the other mode, you will have your tablet at the table and you can see all the hands and values for the game, meaning even if you don’t understand Hold’em rules you can get an understanding.
A Bloody Mess
With how the game plays out and the developers, it only made sense that Death Game Hotel visual style and audio is like an over the top anime. With the character models and creepy baby host holding the most detail from a visual aspect and being brightly colored compared to the environments you face them in. However, I did find a number of issues with the visuals from some bad anti-aliasing around the character models and the objects like the tables, chairs and surroundings having much lower quality textures compared to the characters, goblets, tiles and cards – which made the lower textures standout even more. With the size of the game areas, you would expect it should be able to handle better textures and negate anti-aliasing issues – especially on a Meta Quest 3, hopefully this can be patched further down the line.
For the audio you are going to get some background music that seems to match in well with your current opponent as you sit around the table, but in most cases these are very short loops and them repeating will eventually start to annoy you. Each of your opponents are voice acted well and each voice suits the characters demeanor, but as with the music they will repeat set lines as your are sat playing your round – again becoming quite annoying after a set amount of time. Which is a shame as they seem very interactive, it’s just ruined by the few lines they are given. One touch I did like in the audio is, when you bet your ears and lose the hosts voice will change, like losing your ears has had an effect on your character. Although, an issue rears its head here, as its only the hosts voice that changes the rest of it stays the same, breaking that little bit immersion offered by this.
Comfort
The Verdict
Death Game Hotel is an odd one in both a good and bad way. The concept and how the game works in betting your body parts and life over a table game, makes you instantly realise its a Swery game, it just suits him down to a tee. The ‘Goblet of the Reaper’ mode is a unique idea for a table based gambling game, which is simple by premise, easy to understand after a few rounds but, difficult to master – which is complement to the overall idea and design of the game. But, outside of this the game is let down by some poor visual and audio aspects and the game really depending on multiplayer to give it any real longevity. Which means you have to be doing something really special and adding updates to keep a playerbase – where Goblet of the Reaper is interesting, I am not sure it will keep players wanting to return, so more unique games modes being added is going to be essential.