System: Valve Index, HTC Vive & Oculus Rift Price at Time Of Review: £1.59 Comfort Rating: Green Genre: Interactive Experience Input: Tracked Motion Controllers, Gamepad, Keyboard & Mouse Best Playing Position: Standing Multi-Player: No Age Rating: 15+
Description: Hotel Blind is a simulator of a blind person in a hotel room. Enter a new room and complete five objectives before leaving the room. Text popups and audio describe the objects in the room and the walls, allowing you to map out the room in your mind as you play. Navigate the room using movement keys or your gamepad. Completing all of the objectives will complete the room. Each play starts a random room. Hotel Blind can be a standard experience, or a VR experience on the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.
Review: Saying there isn’t a lot visually in Hotel Blind is not me being condescending, it really is meant to be the sort of game it is. There really is nothing to see hear other than text blocks and the odd sound. Given that blind people can’t read text blocks anyway, this is one experience that had good intentions, but when about it the wrong way. I do get the purpose they wanted people to experience this for (showing how difficult it is for a blind person in a hotel), but I think the way they went about it is too sparse, too basic. Maybe there should have been different levels of visual impairment, maybe a game with more use of spatial sound, I don’t know. All I do know is there really isn’t a point to this game as the point they were trying to make simply isn’t there.
