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Lost in the lobby: hotel hell!

Hi players!
Lobby Loitering is an rpgmaker 2003 game made by ViktorTheGreat (in a year and a half, but hey it's a complete game!), and it's the incredible adventure of a quiet guy named Marcel. Our hero is exploring a dying mall of his town, where many people speak about a mysterious abandoned store, and everyone seems interested in finding this place for some reason. Why? well that's a mystery, in any case that's just the beginning of a great story! An adventure that will be about a lot of different themes, different persons and their lives (and friends and foes!), so in the end it's a game about life in general.

Marcel in fact at a certain point find himself in another dimension populated by strange humanoids, some are half animals and others half plants... then he leaves but still he keeps finding himself in other dimensions that have all one thing in common: all these places that he will visit are hotels! Hotels, and their surrounding areas. Anyway the adventure first begins with an important decision: the walking speed! This game includes a lot of walking, so I chose the fastest option (2), and I did not regret that!


Wait, wait, wait, WAIT! What's going on here??? Looks like we're lost in the multiverse!

Ok, so this game is an adventure game in which we play Marcel, that is the classic silent protagonist, but despite being really taciturn (or mute! Anyway in the end the reason will be explained) he will have to be helpful to the weird people he will meet in order to be able to go home. Despite the weird creatures encountered, the places are totally normal and peaceful locations, so do not expect furious battles or complex puzzles (even if there is the occasional chase section but do not worry, nothing really difficult or risky! No gameovers!), the game is all about mundane tasks like finding lost items in exchange for some other quest items that are necessary to solve some tasks. And the objective of each level (because every dimension is a level, or better, an hotel with many quirky characters and some little tasks). In short it's a game about exploration and problem solving!

Telleigh is a character that will be present in each dimension/hotel visited, a humanoid with a television head that will provide the occasional advice (speaking through tv-screens) and sometimes can be helpful to understand what Marcel is supposed to do next, but he's just one of the many different individuals that our hero will meet in his adventures (my favourite character was Orca!), even if in this case he's a central part to the game, but play the game and you will understand the role he plays.


Oh gosh how tragic! We'll surely find a solution, to this and MANY other little problems of these weird people...

Each dimension and each hotel is different from the previous (and I liked them, some are very evocative like the creepy hotel in the snow... it was dark and very reminiscient of the Shining! Very different from some of the other coloful and lighthearted settings), and even if sometimes there will be some similar locations (the corridors with the rooms, of course) do not expect a repetitive game: each place has carefully designed location made with custom assets and sprites. Every location is well made, there are no mapping errors from what I experienced, nor there are places that are too huge or too small, every room is also well detailed and includes lots of interactions with objects.
Oh and there are also some locations where you can just "look at" and these are instead rapresented by real-life photos, another aspect that makes this game stand out, not that there is a lack of some cutscenes with a more "cartoonish" aspect.

But his is not everything: the game also has lots of cute animation like Marcel dancing, drinking, shaking his head IF you try to do something he does not want to do, like leaving a hotel instead of looking for the next portal. Or the parts in which we've to drag around some heavy quest items (that also result in a slower movement, of course). There's a lot of attention to the little details in this game, including many cameos and references to games (like Pen Pals) and other media (like Beavis & Butthead, to name one of these).


Wait I'm not a...SSSSHHHHH! ok ok, that key will surely become useful!!!

Sounds and music seems to be custom made at least for most of them (I saw the credits at the end of the game, but I do not remember them). There are a lot of different themes that change with the same frequency with the change of settings and style of the dialogue window (yes, that changes too, and it's the same for the soundtrack). For the most part sounds music seems appropriate to me (that part with Cube-head and Talleigh was really exciting), and I absolutely like also some details here, like how the same music is loud when you are inside the nightclub, and how it's softer when you enter the bathroom. It's a small thing, but one of the many that show the refinement of this game!

Finally the themes: in the beginning this looked like a lighthearted adventure, then you get to know various situations that aren't lighthearted at all: wars, murders, psychotic individuals... still there is some humor and heartwarming moments.


Well, my friend, this happened a lot of times when I was playing The Witcher 3...

Final Verdict
Lobby Loitering is a solid adventure and a really cook game: while the gameplay is pretty simple and nothing more than fetch quests and tasks that require logic solutions, the graphics and atmosphere is incredible: there's an excellent use of music and graphics, assets are in particular colorful and original, not to mention the nice cutscenes. Marcel is also a kind a sweet person despite not having a single line of dialogue and expressing himself just with gestures... but that's enough!

I also found no bugs or errors in this game, my really only problem is that I wish some places were explored more and I'm not just talking about visiting more parts. I mean that some characters encountered are never really analyzed, the background of some locations and worlds is never clarified (for example what happened in the last hotel of the game?). Well, I may have missed some parts (the game is big and not every single location is important, BUT you can get extra dialogues and descriptions by interacting with some people and items that aren't necessary to complete the game). Also I think that some players may feel lost in some parts without a clear guidance, but no hotel is so huge you cannot figure out, sooner or later, what you have to do (you can also save anytime, so no worries if you cannot finish the game in a single sitting!).

Lobby Loitering is the game I did not expect and it's my favourite game made by ViktorTheGreat.


Hey, but I know you! Panda! From maroonracoon's game Pen Pals! And that's one of the many cameos in this game!

Posts

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Thank you for the review!
Part of the reason I spent so much time on this game (other than college and my job) was because I wanted to make each of the hotels feel lived in and real, especially when you consider how small they are in the grand scheme of things. I think, like you said, attention to the little details is incredibly important in making that possible. I have more ideas for things I could add in, maybe in a cosmetics/aesthetics update sometime down the line, but I don't have anything major planned as of right now.
But thank you again!
Well I liked that and I admit in the beginning I expected the adventure to be far shorter, but it was a pleasant surprise to be proved wrong! I mean all hotels are cool anyway my only problem is that, how I wrote, there are many questions... (who's the red hooded boy? Who was the blondie in the motel with the garden? What happened to Cube-head, Orca and the bums?) ok it's clesr that leaving the stories incomplete is part of the game (since it's about meeting people, each one living his/her own life), but in the beginning I expected some sort of final explanation or series of epilogues for each one.
Buuut neeeevermind, this was a cool game!
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