Hotel Warden

The clock hit midnight and all the lights were off, except for a small lamp in the corner -- and the glow from my computer screen. Yawning, I browsed various forums across the Internet, trying to find a new video game to play. I had been through most of the popular ones, and I was getting into more underground video games that not a lot of people played because more times than not, these were hidden gems that were a LOT of fun to play.

I was scrolling through, when something caught my eyes: Hotel Warden FREE DOWNLOAD. Now, I usually don't fall for these click-baity titles, but the comment section was ... interesting to say the least. Most of the users were praising the overall game, but a few of them said things like "don't play this!" or "stay away!!!" Intrigued, I went ahead and clicked the download button.

Instantly, my computer screen went dark. Great, more malware, I thought. But in a few seconds, the game loaded up and displayed the home page with a singular button that said PLAY. Huh, that's weird, I thought, I didn't even set up the game, or create an account, or launch the game. A little suspicious of the link, I tried closing out of Hotel Warden -- but it didn't let me. Shrugging, I clicked PLAY, and I was instantly hooked.

I had expected low-resolution, blocky character designs and backgrounds, but no. This was top-notch graphics that you would expect from a big game company. Moreover, the game had a very unique premise surrounding it. There was a man trapped in an abandoned hotel trying to get out. But the catch is that you controlled the abandoned hotel, not the man. So the objective of the game was to keep the man trapped in the hotel by controlling doors, setting painful traps, and sending masked goons throughout the hotel -- all of which you could monitor through the hundreds of camera angles that were available to you.

I instantly started playing and hunting the man through the hotel. Once I spotted the man in the cameras, it was surprisingly fun to try and keep up with him. But about ten minutes in, something very peculiar happened. He walked up to one of the cameras, put his tear-streaked face in front of the camera, and shouted something into it. I could almost hear him, pleading for me to help him. To make it stop. Disturbed, I powered off my computer and went to bed.

The next morning, I woke up and went downstairs to make myself some coffee. I turned on the TV and flipped through some channels, when I saw something that chilled me to the core. The news reporter was talking about a police investigation that was ongoing. The previous night, someone reported hearing screams from an abandoned building, and when the police got there, they found a man dead, his face contorted in a horrible scream, looking into what seemed to be a security camera. I dropped my cup, for the man whose image they were showing on the TV was the same guy from Hotel Warden.