The iconic and legendary filmmaker David Lynch passed away earlier this year, leaving behind a record of filmmaking unlike any other director. Not only a slew of famous and award winning films, but the classic TV series Twin Peaks, regarded as one of the finest mystery TV shows of all-time. Lynch however was an unconventional filmmaker and many of his films were deliberately alienating and uncomfortable, challenging the audience and subverting expectations. High on my list for off-kilter Lynch films are Blue Velvet (1986) and his first feature film, Eraserhead (1977), films which are often deeply unpleasant to watch. It’s this atmosphere I was often reminded of while playing Concierge, a surrealist adventure from new developers Kodino.
Concierge is a point-and-click adventure, but not one which adheres to the normal structure of the genre. You play as an old man, who awakens in a shabby, rundown hotel in the middle of a terrible snowstorm. You appear to be the hotel’s sole occupant, besides an eccentric old man behind the concierge desk in the lobby, who speaks about how you should enjoy your stay, and randomly disappears whenever you leave and return to the area. You are free to wander around the hotel as you please, and gradually try to uncover the story based on a variety of notes, letters and other cryptic clues.
The gameplay is broadly undirected; you are given no objectives and there is zero hand-holding. At the start of the game you have no idea what you’re doing, except being able to walk around the hotel and pick up some items. Gradually though you’ll uncover various things; upon getting into one of the other hotel rooms you find a film camcorder with a night-vision lens, allowing you to look at all environments from a zoomed in and filtered perspective. This view can expose various things previously hidden as well as yet more clues and oddities, some of which point to puzzles and some of which might be red herrings.
This kind of gameplay structure reminded me of how people solved PT when it was released, trying every variation and possibility to see what worked. While there are hints and suggestions of things to do, a lot of it amounts to just guessing. I would often walk around the hotel wondering if something would change, or what I had missed in order to progress things further. Sometimes I’d happen upon an item or a clue I hadn’t noticed before, such as a number or a note, or a hidden coin, but there were few signs I was actively progressing beyond the key moments of finding the camcorder and then finding pages of a script (which then appears on the bulletin board in the old man’s room). Sometimes, things almost seemed to progress randomly, without me doing anything in particular.
The atmosphere is spot-on however, an absolute dead ringer for the films of Lynch, particularly Eraserhead. The hotel is dark, decrepit and almost derelict, with broken windows and a disgusting kitchen. The fact that it’s even operating seems questionable in itself, since the front door is locked and the concierge refuses to let you leave. The sound effects of the howling snow and the creaking floorboards as well as the laboriously slow elevator ground you into the world, along with the very creepy vinyl record playing on a gramophone in the lobby, the noise of which echoes from adjacent floors. Visually too, the graphics have this oddly hand-drawn but animated look, which gives all scenes a disconcerting scale, both too big and too small. It’s a deliberate choice but for the vibe it’s going for, it certainly works.
Unfortunately, a great deal of my time playing Concierge was spent wandering in circles, waiting for something to happen. Those who enjoy hunting for secrets or have the patience to uncover its mysteries may get more out of it, but I was ultimately left just feeling frustrated and wanting at least a hint of what I should be doing next, or even just some conversations with characters (the concierge, the only character with dialogue, delivers his entirely as one-sided monologues, with the old man completely mute). Its surreal and disorientating atmosphere is absolutely effective, but it comes at the expense of a properly enjoyable and satisfying gameplay experience.
