[Disclaimer: I received a review key for Last Guest through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
Last Guest
Systems: Windows, Steam OS
Release Date: May 28, 2025
Publisher: Room13Games
Developer: Room13Games
Time Spent: 47 Minutes
Playthrough Videos on YouTube
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Last Guest plays like a combination of visual novel and walking simulator, which isn't supposed to be a dig at either genre. While there isn't a whole lot to do in Last Guest besides talk to a couple of people, it does deliver on being a moderately unsettling game. In Last Guest, you follow the story of a man who stops at a motel while driving somewhere between Portland and Seattle (it's about a three-hour drive), although they mention that "have to get back to Takomu," which maybe is supposed to be Tacoma (which is only an hour or so south of Seattle, depending on traffic), or it's just a fictional town in the Pacific North West. The narration also mentions that they've been driving all day, hence them being tired and needing to stop, so geographically, I have no idea where the story is supposed to take place*. That doesn't really matter, though, because the setting of the game is a small two-floor motel off a highway, so it really could just be anywhere, which is just as well.
Part of what makes this game slightly unsettling is that I'm not always sure if the characters and dialogue were purposefully written that way or if there was something that happened during the localization process. The dialogue from all of the characters always feels a bit off, both in terms of what is said and how the response relates to the expected reaction to the previous comment.
You: Good evening. Do you have a room available for the night? I'm exhaused after driving all day.
Concierge: Number 7. Available.
You: Great, I'll take it. How much is it? Is there anything closer on the second floor?
Concierge: Pay in the morning. Room 7, on the first floor. There are no others. Keep the key.
Because there is no voice over when the characters speak, it's left up to the player to interpret how the dialogue would sound coming out of each character's mouth, be it spoken hastily with an unsettled urgency, or a slow and friendly manner, like someone doing a poor job of trying to conceal nervousness. I read the Concierge's dialogue in a slightly slow and monotonous tone, like they're doing a bad job of reading a script. I can't quite place it. Like, it seems intentional, but at the same time, not. The dialogue of the Concierge feels just off enough that it nearly gives me chills. Similar to how disjointed the voice on the phone in Stephen King's short story "1408" comes across.
The telephone continued to grind and spit, the voice coming from it now the voice of an electric hair-clipper that has learned how to talk: "Five! This is five! Ignore the siren! Even if you leave this room, you can never leave this room! Eight! This is eight!"**
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A big "Ooph" for me, and apparently a lot of people, was the appearance of the mechanic, who has a nasty habit of clipping into the wall. If you watch either of my videos (linked above), you'll notice that it's particularly bad in the partial video where the mechanic is half in the wall and his face keeps clipping into the towel rack. In the full video, it's not so bad, mainly his shoulder, but it's still distracting. My uneducated guess is that it has something to do with where the player is located when they click the shower, to where specifically the mechanic spawns, in that it's not a set spawn point but is reliant on the location of the player. I'm also not certain if the mechanic's eyes were supposed to be double-pupilled a la
the Axe Maniac from
In the Mouth of Madness, or if it was just a bad character model/asset.
I also experienced a game-breaking glitch, viewable in the partial video at the 15:10 mark. Something about where my character was positioned when I clicked on the car in your character's first attempt to escape the motel, and where you respawn. I can only guess that I was somehow too close to the car, and when the character model respawned after the screen cut to black, I might have respawned slightly inside the model of the car, rendering my character immovable.
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One small thing that bothered me was that there were several houses clearly across the street from the motel if you walked as far out of the driveway as possible. Maybe the houses came with the location and were not purposefully placed there, because then why else wouldn't the character just go across the street to use the phone after witnessing a murder? I get that the location of the motel is supposed to feel remote based on the opening text, but seeing several houses, literally across the street, made it feel more suburban than rural. Yes, it didn't look like there were indoor lights on during the night scene, but I guess that's just the backseat driver during a horror movie part of my brain working.
There were a couple of typos, too, throughout the game. In one instance, the dialogue had the "Concierege" as the person talking when it was clearly the player. In another instance, a character was described as a "man" when the character model was clearly a woman, which means that either it's a simple typo or that the character model was changed at some point during development. These alone or altogether were not enough for me to write off the game, but it did make the game feel significantly less polished.
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Overall, I actually enjoyed the story behind Last Guest as it reminded me of a short story Stephen King might come up with. Out of the way motel, weary and tired driver, creepy and cryptic concierge, murderous neighbor, strange local mechanic. All of the components are there for a fun and creepy short story, and I could tell that that was what Room13Games was trying to convey, but Last Guest just didn't feel as complete or refined as it could have been. Maybe with another couple of passes from an editor and a couple of tweaks after some playtests, there really could be something here.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
* Although, I guess if you wanted to take an indirect coastal route from Seattle to Portland, then it could take you just over seven hours, although that doesn't answer if Takomu is supposed to be Tacoma or not.
** King, Stephen. “1408.” Everything’s Eventual: 14 Dark Tales, Pocket Books, New York, NY, 2003.
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