In Infinite Hotel, a VR simulator game by Italic Pig, you’re meant to explore a huge alien hotel, fulfilling requests and getting guests to the correct floor.
Infinite Hotel puts you in an elevator, which is a pretty clever way to use VR. You don’t need to leave this room much, as it’s where your job takes place. To the left of you, you can see a console that shows what floor has called your elevator, what floor you are on, what item is needed, and a giant handle for moving the elevator up and down the hotel.
Once you have some requests in, you can start moving from floor to floor. Some customers want an item from the service desk (which is on a specific floor). Others want you to deliver packages or to bring them to the correct place. All of these creatures needing your help are aliens, and their requests come in the form of bubbles above their head. You can pop the bubble you want to respond with before taking on their task.
In the flow of going from floor to floor, you’ll have to try not to be too taken aback by what’s going on within the floors of the hotel. Beautiful places, dark hallways, and more make up the stops you make, but you’ll need to keep on-task if you want to do your job well. After you have completed a task, you’ll get a rating, and if it’s good, your elevator will improve. Faster speeds are what the goal is, since there are so many floors to travel through.
I got the chance to play Infinite Hotel at GDC, and I really enjoyed my time with the game. It’s a brilliant and clever idea, executed perfectly. The aliens and different environments just outside your elevator are wonderful – as are the silly tasks you are given. The game itself is looking great, and I will be playing quite a bit of it once it is released.
Infinite Hotel is currently in development, but you can follow its creation on Twitter.
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Floor Plan did something similar (on a much smaller scale, I assume) with the elevator being your space. It works really well.