Objects appear, odd markings are drawn into corners, symbols are interpreted, and eventually things unwind into the unnerving weirdness that’ll be familiar to anyone who’s ever played a Rusty Lake entry. The daytimes in the room vary with each new morning, not just in the nature of the peculiar puzzles during the check-ups and so-called memory tests, but in the increasingly strange happenings in the room. Nothing taxing, nothing stunning, but it involves you in ways that seem trivial, but ensure you pay attention to key details for later on. So if Robert explains he lifted his drink and took a sip, you drag his drink up to his mouth. Throughout these you interact in the right window by performing the actions described in the left. And as elements of colour begin to creep in, it just gets better.Īs the days go by, Robert’s memories preceding his arrival to this white room are explored, perhaps through dreams? These are narrated by Robert, in a splendid tired drawl from Bob Rafferty, who appeared in Rusty Lake’s last multi-media experiment, Paradox. It’s all so very aesthetically pleasing, the line-drawn world rendered in this way. I know it might seem odd to declare a split screen is “completely wonderful”, but it is, and let’s all just accept that. In practice, this involves your moving Robert around the left side of the screen, while close-ups appear on the right. 3pm memory training on the primitive computer. How and why you are there is very much the point of the game, but it’s no spoiler to say you’re in some sort of… clinic? It’s the early ‘70s, and there’s a routine you’re required to follow: Get up. The White Door is their most successful entry yet, a brilliantly imaginative, unsettling puzzle adventure that increasingly weaves its way into the ongoing Rusty Lake mythos, while operating independently of everything that’s come before. Over five years and fourteen games, the Dutch development duo have created an unreality with its own internal illogic, a marauding sense of unease, and the sense that if it ever started to make any, you’d be in a fair amount of trouble. To successfully play a Rusty Lake game is to accept the tenets of a dream. To play a Rusty Lake game is to experience a dream.
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