Dive

From a mention on Miss Orr's blog, I decided to see what Dive was about. Miss Orr described it as "a haunted event" with "puzzles to solve and gifts to acquire," put on by SN@TCH and other designers.

It takes place in a decrepit hotel. You are investigating...well, something - the narrative isn't crystal-clear - having to do with a series of deaths over the years. You begin in the hotel lobby, ascend an elevator, and walk into a hotel room. Each room contains clues and gifts, so click on everything. Some of the clues are narrative: a newspaper clipping, or an old letter might give you a sense of what happened in the room long ago. Other clues help you navigate: to get to the next room (most of the time), you must enter the correct code on a keypad, which then opens up a map with coordinates for the next location.

Much of the action is in the same room, only at different times as you slowly work your way to the present. This hotel has a very unhappy history!

Some parts are creepy, with plenty of blood stains and the occasional corpse, but much is done without obvious violence, the atmosphere of the sad room conveying a great deal.

As the hotel moved down the long slope from reputable to seedy, its clientele went downscale as well:

Although most travel involves teleporting from location to location, at times there is a need for more direct and less sanitary modes of travel.






The puzzles are sometimes easy and sometimes a little challenging, but nothing that could not be worked out in a few minutes. I took about an hour and a half to get through the entire thing, and a brighter person could cut some time off that. It's time worth spending, in my view. Dive goes through Nov. 14, I believe.