Visual Novel / Hotel Dusk: Room 215

"Mr. Hyde, I must ask you again. Who are you?"

"Like I said, pal. Just a salesman."

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (Wish Room: Angel's Memory in Japan) is an Adventure Game/Visual Novel developed by Cing and released in 2007 for the Nintendo DS. In it you play as an ex-cop, Kyle Hyde, who arrives in a small hotel in the middle of nowhere — the eponymous Hotel Dusk. Kyle left the force after shooting Brian Bradley, his former partner who betrayed him and joined a criminal syndicate. Bradley's body was never found, but Kyle is sure that Bradley is alive and is searching for him, hoping to understand what happened.

Kyle soon runs into the staff and residents of the hotel. There's the initially bratty kid with her father, an old lady who wears an eye patch, a girl wearing white who doesn't speak, and many others. All have tragic secrets hidden in their pasts, which is not a surprise in a game like this, and these secrets start to lead Kyle closer to finding Bradley.

The game can be played almost entirely with the touch-screen of the DS and, in some of the puzzles you have to solve, uses some of the more unconventional abilities of the machine (remember that puzzle in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass that took you an hour to solve? Hotel Dusk did it first, and twice). You move around the hotel as Kyle, pick up things and speak with other characters, asking them questions. The game is divided into ten chapters, each culminating in interrogation of one of the characters. A game over can result by asking the wrong questions or by being caught doing something you shouldn't do. (It is a hotel, so you shouldn't wander around in the kitchen or other areas marked 'Staff Only', but usually this just gets you some angry looks. Lucky you.)

Visually, backgrounds are in 3D and fully coloured, but the characters are in 2D and most of the time black and white. There is no voice-acting, but background music is on most of time and different characters and situations have their own theme-tunes.

A sequel was released in 2010 titled Last Window: The Secret of Cape West, again featuring Kyle, now in Los Angeles in 1980. It was developer Cing's last game, and outside of Japan it was only released in Europe, which is ironic seeing as to how the game is set in L.A.

The Another Code series takes place in the same universe, twenty-five years later.

Received what seems to be a Spiritual Successor in 2016, Cold Case Investigations - Distant Memories, which received a surprise localization, continuing the series' legacy of narrowly avoiding complete No Export for You.

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Hotel Dusk provides examples of:

Tropes A to H

• Adventure Game
• Amoral Attorney: Larry Damon, Jeff's father.
• Ambiguously Brown: Well, there's a lot of debate on Rosa's ethnicity.
• The Bartender: Louis.
• Bittersweet Ending: Bradley's sister was murdered by Mila's father, who has been killed by Bradley in return. Bradley is being chased by Nile. Grace is still missing, and nobody has any idea how to find her. Alan is still missing, and nobody has any idea where he is. While at first this seems like a full-on Downer Ending, the game still ends on a positive note with Kyle and Mila leaving to restart their lives, Jenny being returned to Dunning and, quite simply, all the characters being ready to take on whatever else the world throws at them with something a lot of them had given up on before then; hope.
• Book Ends: The game begins and ends with you opening a door, and centers around Kyle teasing Dunning's claims about room 215 "granting wishes".
• Bookcase Passage: There's a hidden door behind the shelf in the wine cellar.
• Boss Fight: The interrogations at the end of almost every chapter are reminiscent of this.
• Butt-Monkey: Louis - the poor guy just kind of gets bitchslapped by life, again and again.
• But Thou Must!: You're gonna help these people whether you want to or not.
• Captain Obvious: Bound to happen with the ability to observe any everyday item. Lampshaded (ironically) in the words of Kyle himself:
  "It's tall, a lamp, and I'm king of the obvious."
• Chiaroscuro
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Kyle just can't help but help. One of his monologues calls it a hold-over from his cop days.
• Collector of the Strange: Rosa, who collects famous people's autographs.
• The Confidant:
  • Kyle Hyde. He lampshades it at one point by asking Louie why everyone wants to dump their problems on him. Louie basically replies that it's because he comes across as The Everyman - someone who knows how rough life can be and isn't going to play the Holier Than Thou routine on them; he gives a straight answer in exchange for being told straight.
  • Louis himself is this to Kyle, as the latter reveals everything he knows or finds out to the former.
    Kyle: Now look who's sounding like an advice columnist.
• Continuity Nod: There are a lot of them to the Another Code games that indicate that the games take place in the same world.
• Contrived Coincidence: All these people connected to each other in some way meeting in the same place on the same day can be a bit ridiculous.
• CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Kyle performs this on Mila in Chapter 9 when she begins having trouble breathing and blacks out.
• Credits Gag: The game lampshades its lack of voice acting in the credits by having all the characters starring As Themselves.
• Creepy Basement: It's dark, spooky and has at least two hidden doors.
• Cute Mute: Mila, until Chapter 9.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Almost all the characters in the game; Kyle's a former cop who got canned for going off and shooting his former turncoat partner, Louie was a pick-pocket who went straight after his best friend died, Summer stole his friend's manuscript as his own to become famous, Kevin lost his wife Grace when she pulled money out of nowhere to cover his being sued for malpractice, their daughter Melissa is depressed and angry over her mother being gone, Helen lives with the guilt of having abandoned her son to be a star, Jeff's father is both neglectful and mobbed up, Iris (Grace's half-sister, Melissa's aunt and Kevin's sister-in-law) lived a miserable life with a mother who was always running from one man to another until she died in a plane crash and got sent to an orphanage, Dunning lost his wife and was forced to be a painter without recognition for his mobbed-up friend with his daughter abducted as collateral, and Milla lost her mother and then got put in a ten-year coma after taking a head-injury during an abduction her own father had been apart of. In fact, literally the only person who doesn't have this is Rosa, who merely lives separate from her husband and son.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to Another Code, which this series is the Spiritual Successor to.
• Dead Artists Are Better: Invoked and exploited. Osterzone - Dunning says his paintings sold better when they were reputed as being done by someone long dead.
• Dialogue Tree: A lot of the conversations have a two-way branching choice on what to say, though a lot of the time it's a linear "right or wrong/good choice, bad choice" deal.
• Didn't See That Coming: Kyle makes a remark like this two or three times as the plot twists start piling up.
• Drowning My Sorrows: In one of the Nonstandard Game Overs, Dunning cheers up a depressed Kyle by offering to get drunk with him. It's a Game Over because Kyle is too busy getting drunk to get anything done for the rest of the night.
• Event Flag: The game leads you to believe you have to figure out a way of the Creepy Basement, but actually you're saved because decoding a message triggers Louie helping you out. In general, situations like this are noticeable throughout the game, such as the majority of the cast being absolutely nowhere most of the time until the right events happen for them to become plot relevant.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Kyle's first adventure takes a day to go through.
• The Faceless: Ed's eyes are never shown.
  • And we never get a clear look at Bradley's face by the end of the game.
• Film Noir: Though it's set in the late '70s/early '80s, so this would kind of be... neo-Noir?
• Game-Over Man: Dunning; in any instance outside the end-chapter confrontations where Kyle gives up, Dunning will instead boot Kyle out for breaking hotel rules, harassing guests or stealing property.
• Get Out!: Any game over sequences that results when Dunning evicts Kyle from the hotel after he is caught doing something suspicious or downright wrong.
• Glasses Pull: Martin does this when his façade starts crumbling.
• Golden Ending: Clearing the entire campaign without getting a Game Over will show you that Jenny does return safely to the hotel.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The criminal organization "Nile" is brought up several times. Ultimately subverted as, while having ties to Kyle, Dunning, Louie, Milla and Jeff's stories (as well as being implied to be tied to Grace, Keven and Iris's tale), the organization itself is never confronted as anything more than either a peripheral or as a motivator for how some of the characters ended up where they are now.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Kyle isn't exactly the most scrupulous of detectives and a pretty big jerk to boot. Those he interrogates, while often unpleasant at the start, also happen to be people who were broken tragic circumstances or have been living with the guilt over something they did in the spur of the moment.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: Dunning KOs Kyle and Louie this way at the end of Chapter 9, clubbing them on the back of the head with what looks like a brick.
• Guide Dang It!: Good luck getting that secret item from the vending machine without using one.
  • However, there's no penalty for just putting in numbers until you get the prize. Still, good luck getting the coins.
  • To view a special message in the final chapter to escape an airtight room, better have an item from earlier in the game! Don't have it? Well, you can also tilt the DS screen. Playing it on a 3DS, which has a fundamentally different screen making the number impossible to see? Um...^note The number is randomly chosen each save file, too, so you can't just look it up. You can, however, look up the answer to the code that the number shifts letters to decode and reverse-engineer the puzzle, but then you're not only looking up a guide but also plot spoilers as well.
  • And the puzzle immediately after the one described above is... walk into a corner.

Tropes I to Q

• I Need a Freaking Drink: Louie's reaction in Chapter 10 upon learning the painting his best friend died trying to steal has been sitting in a secret basement under his bedroom for months now, with the kicker being that he ended up working for the guy that created it in the first place.
  Louie: I need a drink, man - hell, I need three!
• Ironic Nickname: Each room in Hotel Dusk has a nickname. By extreme coincidence, each guest on the day that Kyle stays at the hotel is in the room with a name that describes the particular virtue he or she is lacking:
  • Martin Summer is in Room 211, "Honor." He stole his best friend's manuscript to fulfill his dream to become famous.
  • Jeff Angel is in Room 213, "Trust." He does not trust his father, who has ties to Nile, to the point of refusing to use the old man's surname.
  • Helen Parker is in Room 212, "Angel." She is eaten by guilt over having walked out on her family, feeling herself to be a sinner.
  • Kevin Woodward is in Room 219, "Courage." His cowardice is why his wife left him. When his wife somehow managed to raise enough money to pay off a malpractice suit, he was afraid of how she may have gotten that money, and couldn't leave it alone, even when she told him never to ask about it.
  • Iris is in Room 216, "Success." After her mother died, she never really got much of a successful job, or had much of a life, to the point of being ashamed when her sister, who had become far more successful, met up with her again.
  • Kyle Hyde himself is in Room 215, "Wish." His driving force in life is to find out why his partner Bradley betrayed him - and he does so, getting his wish granted in spite of his cynicism, his disbelief of the supernatural and the story about the room granting wishes having been a total lie.
  • Even the empty rooms have either appropriate or ironic names: Melissa gets trapped in Room 218, "Daybreak", which has no power and she enters because of depression when her father loses his temper; and Bradley stayed in Room 217, "Prayer", where he left "Angel Opening A Door" behind and, following his corruption, is noted to be "beyond prayer now". Room 214, "Shrine", acts as the hiding spot for Kyle and Louie to enact a break-in of Jeff Angel's room, which is basically a crime. Room 220, "Love", never has a guest named to it but is accessible on a New Game+ playthrough. It contains a box of mementos from Milla's childhood with her family, the father of which not only let his corruption overtake love for his daughter but was something of a jerk whose actions destroyed a lot of lives - including Milla's.
• I Should Write a Book About This: Martin decides to write a book based on Kyle at the end of the game. Kyle is less than enthusiastic about it.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: Whenever you get a game over, Kyle will flash back to the exact moment he screwed up. The one exception is if he dies in the basement.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Rosa, as her wedding photo shows.
• I Will Show You X!: Rosa gives the remark of "I'll aggravate YOU!" when Kyle gives the serious questioning.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Kyle, again. Anyone who digs through a hotel storage room and decorates a Christmas tree just to cheer up a little girl who's had it rough... Yeah. That thing's 24 karat. Kyle even lampshades this.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: Very little is spelled out until the end. Half the fun is figuring it out.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Played With. There are only two or three items you can pick up that aren't necessary, and showing stolen items to Rosa or Dunning (or even holding them in some scenarios) causes a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Kyle. More often that not, he's either grumpy or causally sarcastic and bemoans everyone dumping their problems on him. Doesn't stop him from helping them, though - as expected of a former cop.
• Locked Door: As the adventures take place in buildings with private rooms, this is inevitable. You can normally get in just by knocking and having the person inside let you, but there are occasions where you can either slip by or acquire the key.
• Line Boil: The character portraits. It's even used with Kyle's trophy in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which has the unique result of making him the only animated trophy in the game.
• "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: At one point in the game, Kyle claims that "moderation" is his middle name.
• Moon Logic Puzzle: Some of the odder puzzles require a little thinking with the features of the DS.
• Morality Pet: Melissa, Helen and Milla all seem to serve as these at times for Kyle; Melissa has him exercise more patience than he normally would, Helen is surprisingly casual and Mila's fragile nature has him looking out for her. He even comments on it himself when searching for a Christmas tree, noting that his caring about Melissa's happiness is making him soft.
• Morton's Fork: At many points in the game, you will have to choose between two dialog options. Most junction points will have one choice that lets the story go on as normal and intended, with the other upsetting NPCs and jeopardizing (or even ending) Kyle's mission. But there are some decision branches that don't follow this rule, meaning that whichever choice you choose, the story goes on as normal. There's even one during your interrogation of Summer in which the only two choices you have when asking about the veracity of his signature will inevitably upset him, but won't lead to a game over.
• Mukokuseki: Oddly inverted. Most of the younger female characters have distinctly Japanese-looking facial features despite the game taking place in America and there being nothing to indicate any of them have any Asian heritage.
• Multiple Endings: The main part of the ending remains the same, but several factors can change depending on player actions:
  • Extended snippets for each individual are shown for treating them well.
  • When a certain character collapses, your response alters the ending: hitting Mila to make her regain consciousness means she stays at the Hotel in the end, whereas properly resuscitating her means she hitches a ride from Kyle.
  • Finishing with zero failures earns a bonus, post-credits scene: after all the guests depart and while Louis is busy in the bar, Rosa and Dunning muse over the previous day, only for Dunning's daughter to enter.
• Mysterious Parent: Mila's father takes this role, due to his importance in setting up the events of the game.
• Mysterious Waif: Mila.
• Never Found the Body: Bradley after his betrayal. This is the motivator for Kyle's actions in the game, searching for Bradley to get answers about his betrayal as he refuses to believe the latter is dead without seeing it himself.
• New Game Plus: With some slightly different dialogue, a few new scenes, a different prize in the vending machine and a few other tidbits.
• No-Damage Run: A variant — beating the game without a single game over unlocks adds a post-credits bonus to the ending. Dunning and Rosa talk about the previous day at the front desk, only for a new guest to enter; Dunning recoils in shock, before revealing it's his daughter, Jenny.
• Non-Standard Game Over:
  • If you check too many items while locked up in a airtight room at one point in chapter 10, Kyle will run out of oxygen and die. Interestingly, the Game Over screen still shows Kyle leaving the hotel. Also, if you lie to Summer in the bar at the beginning of chapter 7, you'll get a very bizarre Game Over sequence; this is notably the only non-fatal Game Over where Dunning doesn't kick Kyle out, since Dunning was sick of Summer anyway and saw Summer's early departure as an excuse to get drunk with Kyle.
  • There are also several non-confrontation points in each chapter where if you lie to someone, pester them, perform the wrong action, or act like a general jerk/creep, Dunning will give you heat and boot you out of the hotel or Kyle will spend the rest of the night brooding in his room. Thankfully, each one can be side-stepped by picking a neutral or apologetic conversation branch or just doing what the NPCs tell you to do.
• No-Tell Motel: The titular hotel.
• Now, Where Was I Going Again?: You don't really get reminders, so making a note in the notebook helps.
• One Degree of Separation: Every guest staying at Hotel Dusk tonight is connected to Kyle, Bradley, Nile and/or one of the other guests. No exceptions.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: While the game initially lets you get away with a few slip-ups, getting even one question wrong in later interrogation segments (save for one question involving Martin's signature), you're pretty much dead in the water.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. Mila is the name of both the girl at the hotel and Bradley's sister.
• Painting the Medium: A literal case; the introductory scenes of the game are stylized to look like a partially-finished hand-penned and painted image on a white backdrop, which in turn foreshadows the game's plot focusing on the titular angel painting and it's painter Osterzone, aka Dunning Smith.
• The Paragon: Kyle, if a somewhat grouchy take. By the end of the game he was able to give every character he met the strength to follow their dreams and move on in life.
• Parrot Exposition: Kyle Hyde repeats parts of other people's sentences as a question at least as frequently as Solid Snake. His boss even calls him out on it during a late-game phone conversation, as does Jeff Angel in chapter 1.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: It's implied that Bradley had Robert Evans killed as payback for his deeds with Nile.
• Permanently Missable Content: The vending machine's bonus gift. Particularly annoying because you only get one chance to get it and the game doesn't tell you when that chance is.
• The Plan: As revealed in a letter at the end of the game, Bradley set up almost all of the events in order for Kyle to solve the secrets plaguing the hotel and its guests and to get Kyle to stop chasing Bradley. None of this would have worked if Bradley hadn't figured Kyle would still be after him for so long.
• Player Nudge: If you get a Game Over, Kyle will reflect on how he screwed up in the previous scene.
• Plot-Powered Stamina: Kyle does at least stop to eat, but he's capable of functioning quite well past midnight without rest. Possibly a callback to his days as a cop working the streets.
• Point-and-Click Game: The game's format is a touch-screen interface, with the DS held sideways like a notebook.
• Pop Quiz: At the end of each chapter you have get things straight in Hyde's head.
• Prequel: To Another Code.
• Present-Day Past: It's 1979, and Hyde has a digital pager. While early pagers were around in the late '70s, they were bulky, lacked digital displays, were very short-ranged, and generally weren't in use outside of hospitals and fire departments.
• Private Detective: Kyle Hyde, who even speaks like a hard-boiled 1940s private eye despite the fact that the game is set during the late '70s. Lampshaded by a few characters at different points in the story, who all call out Hyde on his out of date cop lingo ("Who talks like that anymore?"), generally as he gets ready to interrogate them.
• Private Eye Monologue: Kyle goes into something like this during the recaps at the end of a chapter.
• Puzzle Reset: All puzzles have this feature. Doing it at one point in chapter 9 will result in a Game Over.

Tropes R to Z

• Rainbow Speak: Words that open up new dialogue options are orange-colored.
• The Reveal: Osterzone was not a real artist from the 19th century, but a pseudonym used by Dunning Smith. The 19th century artist story was all fabricated by Mila's father, Robert Evans.
• Rotoscoping: Like its sequel, Last Window, actors and actresses are brought in, and they are filmed performing various movements. The most essential "frames" of their movements are then drawn over and spliced together to create the grainy, film-noir novel style. You can watch the "behind the scenes" video here.
• Running Gag: Played with. In some conversation options, Kyle has the opportunity to interpret someone's noting his name as them admiring it, saying something along the lines of "Good name, isn't it?" The first time is when Dunning Smith pauses at it due to someone else having signed in with that name before, and the other is Kevin Woodward recognizes it as the name of Milla's last visitor prior to her waking from her coma - neither of which immediately comes to light.
• Save Scumming: You'll probably have to do this every time you hit a game over to get that Golden Ending.
• Saying Too Much: When Kyle raids Dunning's office, some of the things he finds raises questions in his mind. However, if he asks these of Dunning, he'll realize Kyle was snooping and throw him out.
• Scrolling Text: A somewhat slow one, but you can speed it up in a New Game Plus.
• Set Piece Puzzle: A few of these come up, ranging from Melissa's puzzle, to the electric box for Room 218, to shifiting the boxes around in the storage room to find a Christmas tree, to finding the hidden letters in the apple paintings.
• Sexy Secretary: Rachel.
• Shout-Out: A lot of them to Another Code, since they take place in the same universe.
  • "This is like that cartoon with the dog and the dude what's always hungry!"
  • Could be a coincidence, but the plot has a lot of similarities to The Lost Room, except without the Science Fiction.
  • The track (in the first game) that plays during the final chapter, where you finally figure out the whole mystery is called "The Last Sleep" which undoubtedly references The Big Sleep by none other than Raymond Chandler.
    • Helen makes a reference to "The Long Goodbye", also by Raymond Chandler, at the bar with specific instructions for her cocktail:
      Helen: Mind you, a real gimlet is made with half gin and half lime juice, and nothing else!
  • In Chapter 5, if you choose to tell Louie to simply call Jeff away from his room, Louie will say, "C'mon, man, I wanna be like Kojak and bust down his door or something."
• Side Kick: Louis insists on this, whether Kyle wants him to or not.
• Sitting on the Roof: Iris and Mila, at different points.
• Sound Test: The jukebox in the bar.
• Solve the Soup Cans:
  • You have to solve random puzzles (e.g., a matchstick puzzle and a 12 Coins Puzzle), tap the bottle of bourbon, or check the jukebox before you can get vital information from one character. Not because the character cares about the problems —because you're in the bar, and the character hasn't shown up yet, and playing with the puzzle games in the bar is the only way to make time pass so that the vital character shows and is there to talk to you. And for some reason you have to actually solve them, not just play with them.
    • Later, Louis invites you to a quick bowling match and if you lose or give up, you have to keep trying again until you win. It makes a little more sense since it leads to you finding an item.
• Spiritual Successor: To Another Code/Trace Memory. Again!! is a Spiritual Successor to this.
• The Stinger: Mostly to wrap up some unfinished plot points. Finish the first game without getting anyone angry on a New Game Plus, and you get an extra ending scene providing closure for two of the characters.
• Story to Gameplay Ratio: Being a Visual Novel, this series leans heavily on the "story" side.
• Squiggle Vision: The character portraits.
• The Syndicate: Nile, which is a crime organization with ties to the pasts of several people in the game though the group itself never makes an appearance outside of flashbacks.
• Tap on the Head: Both Kyle and Louie get knocked out at the end of Chapter 9. They awaken with a nasty headache, but are otherwise okay - mainly because the one who conked them wasn't trying to kill them.
• Timed Mission: At one point you get locked in an airtight room and must find all the clues hidden in that room before you run out of oxygen and die.
• Tough Act to Follow: In-universe example. Every novel Summer writes is worse than the one before, according to Summer himself. His only well-received book was actually stolen from his friend Alan.
• Twisted Christmas: The first game takes place slightly after, but it still has some effect on the plot.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: Acting like a traditional adventure game protagonist will get you in trouble if people find out you've been stealing their stuff or snooping around their rooms. This leads to moments where you have to avoid Saying Too Much or hide any suspicious items you have on your person.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: Almost. When Kyle gets locked in the basement and needs to find the password, it's possible to end up there without the item required to find out exactly what you need to do. The place is also on a timer, and you end up with a game over if you take too long. However, if you spend enough time guessing, you can eventually get past it anyway.
• Useless Item: Not all items have a use and you'll either automatically drop them or have to at some point.
• The 'Verse: The Continuity Nod with Rosa and her husband, who looks like the captain in Another Code, led many to believe that the game took place in the same universe as Another Code. Word of God later confirmed this.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Act like a jerk to the hotel guests and you'll get a Game Over.
• Visual Novel
• Wham Line: "Osterzone is Dunning Smith."
• Writers Suck: Kyle is a little disparaging towards Martin.
• You ALL Share My Story: Everyone in the hotel is related to Kyle's past in some way.
• You Are Already Checked In: Subverted when protagonist Kyle Hyde books a room at Hotel Dusk. When he signs his name, Dunning the receptionist asks "Really? Is that really your name?" After a little bit, it's revealed someone with the same name stayed at the hotel the year before. This is the first clue something's up at this place.
• You Just Told Me: Almost word for word at the end of the game:
  Kyle: It was the other Kyle Hyde. Wasn't it?
  Dunning: Hey! Who told ya that?
  Kyle: You did. Just now.
• You Lose at Zero Trust: Justified, as you need to learn about everyone in order to get to the bottom of the mysteries.

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I've got myself a paper clip!

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