Fans of “The Twilight Zone” will remember the feeling that came with the start of every new episode. I’m not old enough to have seen the black & white TV show fresh when it aired, but I have wonderful memories watching it with my father during my middle school summers when he would come home from work during lunch time, trying to riddle out what was actually happening in each episode’s strange realities while simultaneously feeling horrified at the answer.
More modern classics like “Severance” use similar tactics, setting up an environment that looks and feels normal at first, only to turn something on its head in a sinister way you didn’t expect. I recently played Hotel Infinity on Meta Quest, and it evokes the same feelings I get from watching “Severance” or “The Twilight Zone,” but this time, the twist is that I’m the one walking the liminal spaces of a warped, twisted universe.
The hall to nowhere and everywhere at the same time
In Hotel Infinity, you’ll walk from room to room, solving puzzles that open impossible doorways, move entire floors, and even rotate gravity itself as you move from one liminal space to the next. The trick here is that you’re physically moving the entire time, not just pushing on a joystick to move your character.
Hotel Infinity is one of maybe half a dozen VR games I’ve played that want players to traverse virtual space by physically walking (or wheeling) in real space. It’s one of the most brilliant uses of what’s called “roomscale VR,” meaning you use an entire physical room’s space to move your body and translate those movements into the virtual world.
Like Eye of the Temple, Hotel Infinity’s levels are designed in such a way that you can physically walk infinitely around your room and make progress in the game. That’s because the hotel’s rooms are a bit of a quantum puzzle. They simultaneously both exist and don’t exist, depending on how you look at them. Peer around one corner and you’ll find a hallway. Peer around it the other way and you’ll see a hotel room.
It’s this use of impossible spaces that makes the game’s movement possible, and it’ll have you getting closer to hitting your 10,000-step goal in your living room every time you play it. The game also has an option for smaller spaces that swaps out physical walking for pushing a virtual thumbstick, but I would advise against this unless you absolutely have to settle. The game is still interesting without the physical movement, but it tends to ruin the immersion a bit.
The game’s puzzles aren’t ever particularly difficult, although most of them will have you looking at familiar objects in unfamiliar ways by the time you’re done. If there’s anything to expect from the game’s clever, dynamic worlds, it’s to expect the unexpected.
If you’re a person who enjoys solving puzzles or venturing into the unknown, few games feel as perfectly crafted as this one. There are no “monsters” and no combat. This isn’t a game full of gore or foul language. It’s one that understands that less is more, and the power of the imagination is far more powerful than any particular thing a person can see.
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