Kyle Hyde: Trapped in Europe

Earlier this year, Cing, a video game developer, filed for bankruptcy.

This was extremely upsetting to me, because Cing developed one of my favorite games ever: Hotel Dusk: Room 215 for the Nintendo DS. It is a visual novel set in 1979. The main character is Kyle Hyde, and his mission is to run around Hotel Dusk solving mysteries and helping all the guests find peace. It's fun. It makes full use of the DS's features--touch screen, microphone, closing it to sleep--in its puzzles. I was excited to learn that there would one day be a sequel!

So imagine my distress to find that during the development of the sequel to Hotel Dusk, Last Window, Cing filed for bankruptcy. I don't know much about bankruptcy or the process of getting games out to the world, but I do know that bankruptcy isn't convenient for anyone.

In September, it came to my attention that Last Window had been released in Europe. Europe! They speak English in some parts of Europe. The Europe web site is in English.

I don't even need English. I would play it in Spanish.

But there are still no plans to release the game in North America. Why? I promise, I won't complain about extra vowels. I have a lot of Canadian friends.

I would leave you with a link to buy it, but Amazon won't ship it to the US. Which in some ways doesn't bother me; they would want me to pay thirty pounds for it. Thirty pounds! This is fifty dollars, people. The upper limit for DS titles in the US is forty dollars. GameStop Ireland wants forty-five pounds. I've been planning on saving up and taking an exciting Europe trip one day. Maybe GameStop Ireland will sell used copies for something closer to standard US retail.