Will this hotel mystery make you put up a “Do Not Disturb” sign?
This Bed We Made is a third-person mystery game in which you play as a maid in a 1950s hotel and snoop around strangers’ rooms to uncover their deadly secrets. Discover what links guests together in this tale of love, heartbreak and murder!
I didn’t know what to expect from a game where you played as a nosey maid who goes rooting through strangers’ belongings, but in doing so I got one hell of a memorable experience. You begin by simply tidying rooms before being called to the main lobby to pick clean up a broken plant, then discover a film roll on the ground belonging to a customer and decides to return it to his room…
This begins a chain of events that will lead you to go through people’s drawers, closets, safes and even bins for clues as to what the heck if going on between the guests and it all comes to a chilling halt with the discovery of a body. What choices you have made and if you have been a good maid or not will decide the outcome of the game during this 2–3-hour story.
As such, there are multiple endings based on a number or elements so replaying the game will net you such different outcomes or you can manually save it at any point. The 1950s setting is a good insight into what life was like for everyone, including the LGBT community and women in the workplace with the terrible prejudice and sexism they suffered from their colleagues and sexually harassing bosses The game also shows how mental health was looked at, which is also full of prejudice as you would imagine.
It does make it a bit uncomfortable at times, but that’s the beauty of the game. It doesn’t shy away from the prejudices of the 1950s, it shines a light under it to expose it for what it was. I honestly wouldn’t mind more games in this setting and hope they also keep on pushing just how backwards the thinking was back then.
The visuals are great with some well-designed characters. The rooms are well detailed and besides an odd visual glitch with a telephone wire during phone calls, the game looks amazing. It does only seem to run at 30FPS, but it’s not the sort of game where framerate makes the difference. The voice-acting is also well done and believable from the entire cast.
The Verdict
While it’s not a long game, This Bed We Made is one of the more memorable of the year. It’s thought-provoking, intriguing and isn’t afraid to show the prejudices of the past. If you are after a mystery that leaves you wanting more, then this is it.