My holiday games are always CiNG games, incredible adventure games with engrossing stories and this tint of blues coming out of the gorgeous music and visuals.
Hotel Dusk and Last Window were like revelations to me. The saga of Kyle Hyde developing through these games as he tries to find closure and purpose in his life was something that was as powerful as it was surreal. It was both about a murder mystery and about the small cracks in your daily life, these moments where you feel like you have nowhere to go and nothing to do.
The Kyle Hyde saga was also about entering the personal spaces of people around you, and looking at a snapshot of people's struggles, may they be strangers or friends, all being linked towards a singular event : a specific day waiting for something to happen or the eviction of a building. The end is in sight, it's all about preparing to see what's on other side.
It was helped with character portraits that managed to convey expressiveness in a way that are still unrivaled to me. Use of rotoscopy, coupled with a brush style makes characters pop out. Never static, always moving, it felt like they were real people, which was something further cemented with the excellent writing from adventure game veteran Rika Suzuki.
Last Window is particularly interesting because it happens during christmas season. As all the tenants are evicted of the building that is soon to be demolished, all the neighbours that you barely knew before are now all linked together as they all are forced to leave something behind whether they want it or not. Hotel Dusk and Last Window works on the same level of urgency, where what you lose is your past. you decide what you have to bring with you forward, may it be hope for the future, or the regrets of the past.
CiNG also made other great adventure games, like the Another Code/Trace Memory series, also showing great care in depicting a child coming to grips with loss and family bonds through the years. The sequel, Another Code R, shows Ashley as a teenager trying to reunite with a father she has almost never met before, trying to find in her how she can find a place for a person that is important to her. Dealing with the awkwardness of a teenager not yet knowing how to deal with their feelings is something that is particularly hard to pull off, and yet this game manages to do it. It feels like a believable evolution of the character, just like Kyle Hyde evolved between the two games.
It's also why CiNG was so good, they did not write static characters, they write characters that are tasked with a new set of problems, but with the baggage they lived through in previous games. What you see is not just a new character, or a reboot. It's the very same character, but different in how they feel about themselves, and how they see the world around them. It's great.
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Unfortunately, CiNG went bankrupt. Nintendo was interested in games showcasing the capabilities of the Nintendo DS, but they were not interested in story-driven games. Rika Suzuki said this about Nintendo:
Now that Nintendo owns CiNG's IPs, I've come to terms that it will forever be locked in their vault, never to be unearthed again, even if the original studio were to come back. It is even more sad since we know that there were ideas about a third chapter of the Kyle Hyde saga, and even the idea of a crossover between Kyle Hyde and an adult Ashley Mizuki. It's also something that we have to leave behind in a way.
What are your memories of CiNG games ? There's also the peculiar Glass Rose, and also Again and Little King's Story of note that some of us might have played.
Hotel Dusk and Last Window were like revelations to me. The saga of Kyle Hyde developing through these games as he tries to find closure and purpose in his life was something that was as powerful as it was surreal. It was both about a murder mystery and about the small cracks in your daily life, these moments where you feel like you have nowhere to go and nothing to do.
The Kyle Hyde saga was also about entering the personal spaces of people around you, and looking at a snapshot of people's struggles, may they be strangers or friends, all being linked towards a singular event : a specific day waiting for something to happen or the eviction of a building. The end is in sight, it's all about preparing to see what's on other side.
It was helped with character portraits that managed to convey expressiveness in a way that are still unrivaled to me. Use of rotoscopy, coupled with a brush style makes characters pop out. Never static, always moving, it felt like they were real people, which was something further cemented with the excellent writing from adventure game veteran Rika Suzuki.
Last Window is particularly interesting because it happens during christmas season. As all the tenants are evicted of the building that is soon to be demolished, all the neighbours that you barely knew before are now all linked together as they all are forced to leave something behind whether they want it or not. Hotel Dusk and Last Window works on the same level of urgency, where what you lose is your past. you decide what you have to bring with you forward, may it be hope for the future, or the regrets of the past.
CiNG also made other great adventure games, like the Another Code/Trace Memory series, also showing great care in depicting a child coming to grips with loss and family bonds through the years. The sequel, Another Code R, shows Ashley as a teenager trying to reunite with a father she has almost never met before, trying to find in her how she can find a place for a person that is important to her. Dealing with the awkwardness of a teenager not yet knowing how to deal with their feelings is something that is particularly hard to pull off, and yet this game manages to do it. It feels like a believable evolution of the character, just like Kyle Hyde evolved between the two games.
It's also why CiNG was so good, they did not write static characters, they write characters that are tasked with a new set of problems, but with the baggage they lived through in previous games. What you see is not just a new character, or a reboot. It's the very same character, but different in how they feel about themselves, and how they see the world around them. It's great.
_____
Unfortunately, CiNG went bankrupt. Nintendo was interested in games showcasing the capabilities of the Nintendo DS, but they were not interested in story-driven games. Rika Suzuki said this about Nintendo:
Now that Nintendo owns CiNG's IPs, I've come to terms that it will forever be locked in their vault, never to be unearthed again, even if the original studio were to come back. It is even more sad since we know that there were ideas about a third chapter of the Kyle Hyde saga, and even the idea of a crossover between Kyle Hyde and an adult Ashley Mizuki. It's also something that we have to leave behind in a way.
What are your memories of CiNG games ? There's also the peculiar Glass Rose, and also Again and Little King's Story of note that some of us might have played.
