This Bed We Made is a game developed by a small Canadian team called Lowbirth Games which, with this work, tries to tell a noir story set in 1950s Canada. The conditions for creating an interesting title were all there, but was the development team able to maintain expectations? Continue reading our This Bed We Made review to find out whether this was the case or not and to learn more about what we think of the game.
A snoopy maid
Canada, 1958. This Bed We Made opens with the game’s protagonist, Sophie, who is in the police station to testify about what happened. After a short phase in which we will witness a scene in which the protagonist will talk to the detective, the game will completely change perspective and transport us to the past. The cleaning lady Sophie is busy with her normal errands at the Clarington Hotel, that is, tidying up and cleaning the rooms while the guests are not at the hotel.
After starting her chores with her, she will be called back to the reception to tidy up a plant that a customer had decided to throw on the ground in a moment of heat. However, once finished, you will find a camera roll inside. Intrigued by this, Sophie will go to the reception to ask Beth who she could be. After a quick check, Sophie will learn that the film belongs to the gentleman in room 505. Since the room was on her list of rooms to clean, she decided to go up and go to the room. However, what she learns in that room will shock her.
Without going into too much detail, as we could give you spoilers that could ruin the surprise, we can tell you that from that moment on, you will no longer play a simple cleaning lady in a renowned hotel, but you will transform into a real detective. With the help of Beth or Andrew (it will be up to you to choose who to rely on), you will begin to dig into the secrets and mysteries of the hotel’s guests, until everything culminates in a bad epilogue.
Puzzles, secrets, and mysteries
The gameplay of This Bed We Made is actually very simple. The game is a neo-noir thriller with a strong narrative component. Consequently, what you will be asked to do as Sophie is to investigate what is happening in the hotel. In fact, by snooping through customers’ belongings, you will be able to discover secrets and mysteries that involve many of the people who stay in the hotel. To continue the game and see the epilogue (which can be reached in about 4-6 hours), you will have to sift through every single object that is present in the guest rooms.
Since this is a forbidden thing, you will need someone else’s help from the inside, also to avoid being discovered by the hotel owner, who is certainly not a very understanding person. For this reason, in fact, right at the beginning of your adventure, you will have the possibility to choose whether the charming Beth will help you in your investigations, or the naive Andrew. Whatever your choice, however, you will always have your back covered, as well as the possibility of asking for help.
In fact, in the case of some things to figure out and some puzzles to decipher, you can ask for the help of your accomplice to make things easier for you. This Bed We Made, in fact, puts you in front of solving riddles, codes to find, letters to decipher, documents to reconstruct, and so on. In short, you will have to play the role of a detective to all intents and purposes, always without forgetting that you are impersonating a cleaning lady, so you will still have to continue with your daily routine. Furthermore, between one investigation and another, you will also have time to discover things about your colleagues that could solve very interesting things that could change the fate of the game.
Choices to make
As we said, This Bed We Made is a game that focuses a lot on narrative. Consequently, the choices you make during your adventure will have a very important value. Deciding to say one thing rather than another or hiding an object are all actions that can have very important consequences for the story. In fact, the game is able to make you feel the weight of your choices, as well as what you say to your helper. In fact, for this very reason, This Bed We Made offers the player several different endings, which are shaped according to the choices you decide to make.
Precisely for this reason, that our advice is to experience the story that the developers have decided to tell in This Bed We Made several times, because, even if the key event that revolves around it always remains the same, you can decide to reach it in different ways, which will mean that the final result will also be different. Without going into too much detail, we can tell you that your actions will determine whether the culprit will be framed or not, whether your colleagues will lose their jobs or not, and more. For this reason, therefore, deciding to relive the story at least a second time seems like a more than right thing to do.
You are not alone
As we have already said, during your adventure in This Bed We Made, you will be helped by an accomplice who will guide you in some phases of the game and who will provide you with assistance when necessary. However, the role of Beth or Andrew does not remain limited to this alone. From the moment you have constant interaction with one of the two throughout the story, you will begin to develop an increasingly stronger and more intimate relationship, especially based on the answers you decide to give. This relationship, based on how you decide to make things go, can evolve into something more.
In the course of the story, in fact, at certain moments, in which perhaps you decide to confront your helper either in person or by telephone, you will have the opportunity to give certain answers or ask certain questions, which will be marked with a heart-shaped icon. If you decide to select these lines of dialogue, you will have the opportunity to build your relationship until it becomes a love story. It’s up to you to decide whether to continue this second subplot or dedicate yourself exclusively to the main one.
Stunning graphics but with some insecurities
From a technical point of view, This Bed We Made doesn’t suffer from any major problems. The graphic behavior is of a high level and gives us very well-made and well-looked-after settings of the hotel. In fact, the hotel is cared for down to the smallest detail and has everything you could imagine in a 1950s hotel. Even with regards to the textures, we can’t complain, and we find that the developers have done a truly excellent job to make the settings look their best and give us the sense of being there in that moment too.
However, there are some insecurities in terms of soundness. In general, both the dialogues and the sound effects are well done, although, in the first hour of gameplay, we encountered some problems regarding the audio. In fact, it was not present in some sections of the game, so it was impossible to hear what the characters were saying, which is essential in a game like this. We got around the problem by activating the subtitles, but this is something that should be fixed to eliminate what is perhaps the only flaw we found in This Bed We Made.
This Bed We Made review – 8.5
This Bed We Made is an excellent neo-noir adventure in which you play as Sophie, a cleaning lady who will have to deal with secrets much bigger than herself. The development team has managed to create a story that is always very engaging and can be shaped according to the players’ choices, which is more than welcome in a game like this. This Bed We Made certainly has many strengths in addition to the plot, such as how the developers were able to perfectly recreate the atmosphere of a work set in the 1950s.
Despite some small technical uncertainties that we have already highlighted in the previous chapter, This Bed We Made is a game that we would recommend to anyone, not just players who are passionate about narrative games. In fact, we are quite sure that the story and the pace with which it is told will be able to involve you from beginning to end, also thanks to the fact that you can actually perceive the weight of your decisions. If you are looking for a short game that is capable of leaving you with many emotions, This Bed We Made is definitely the right title for you.
