The Spectrum Retreat Review

Dan Smith is living the dream. In 2016, he won the BAFTA Young Game Designers Award for the prototype of his game, ‘The Spectrum Retreat’, at just 18 years old. Now, with the backing of Ripstone Games, he is releasing the game for Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC this month.

In 2016, Dan Smith won the BAFTA Young Game Designers Award for the prototype of his game, The Spectrum Retreat, at just 18 years old. Now, with the backing of Ripstone Games, he is releasing the game for Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC this month.

And what a first release it is.

The Spectrum Retreat is a genuine spiritual follow-up to 2007’s groundbreaking Portal. Like that epic puzzler, Retreat is far more complex and involved than it first appears. The framework is exactly the same: it is a set of puzzles connected by an obtuse but intriguing narrative. You awake in a hotel room not knowing who you are or how you got there. The futuristic hotel is an upscale Art Deco establishment furnished with polished chrome and marble.

As Homer Simpson would say: The Spectrum Retreat. Population: You.

As you try to piece things together, you are contacted by and connected to a disembodied voice. The caller offers to help you escape the hotel, calling it a simulation. As she speaks to you, you can hear her clicking and clacking away on a computer keyboard.

The Voice advises you to go about your business every day because if you don’t you will alert the androids to your mistrust of them. You get up. Go to the restaurant. Eat breakfast. Once done, the Voice leads you to a special security padded door on each level of the hotel. Beyond the door are puzzles that must be solved before you can exit and repeat the entire process the next day on a different level.

As you crack the physical riddles, more of your backstory is revealed. The hotel itself becomes more and more unstable as the environment glitches out.

Like Portal, the brainteasers require a tool to complete. No, there is no cool Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. Instead, you are just able to collect colours from cubes using the left trigger, and transfer them to other cubes or pads, again, using the left trigger. In unlocking these colour codes you are able to open force fields, glide from one point to another, drop down levels, etc. As you adventure through the hotel the puzzles get more difficult and more intricate, requiring you to juggle many tasks at the same time in order to escape.

The background story revealed through interactions in the hotel itself or the puzzle simulations, is not anything groundbreaking or novel. It does its job well though tying elements of the game together while adding some emotion which is lacking in the puzzle-solving.

The Spectrum Retreat is not a complex game and it doesn’t need to be. Some of the very best game experiences are straightforward and entertaining. Fortnite is this year’s gaming phenomenon but the core concept is nothing really new or fancy at all. It just does what it does really well which is the same for The Spectrum Retreat.

Although heavily inspired by Portal it blazes its own trail, and has its own voice and perspective. Dan Smith has put his own stamp on the genre. It is clear he has a bright future. I am sure we will be hearing more from him in the years to come. Just include a Run button next time to eliminate all that walking, buddy, and we are good as gold.