Hotel Infinity [REVIEW] – A Masterclass in the Magic of VR

If you’ve spent any time in virtual reality, you’ve probably had that moment where you tried to lean on a virtual table or dodge a non-existent wall… we’ve all done it, don’t worry (heck, even world champion snookers players have fallen into the trap). In fairness, I’d usually treat these moments as funny little brain glitches, but what if a developer took that unusual sensation between your physical body and digital space and made an entire game out of it? That’s the pitch for Hotel Infinity, and honestly, it’s one of the most brilliant tricks I’ve ever seen a VR headset pull off.

Check out some screenshots down below:

Hotel Infinity comes from Studio Chyr, the team behind Manifold Garden, and if you played that, you know they have a knack for impossible geometry and infinite loops. But while Manifold Garden was a trippy, expansive puzzle game that you played with a controller, Hotel Infinity feels like the natural VR evolution of its ideas, taking them out of the abstract and grounding them in your actual living room. It’s less about looking at an impossible world and more about physically inhabiting one, and damn, is it clever.

I played this on the Meta Quest 3 using the full room-scale setup, and I cannot stress enough that this is HOW you have to play it. The game asks for a 2×2 meter clear space, which does feel like a big ask – especially since it does use every inch of it – but is essential to getting the most immersive and impressive experience of the game. The premise is simple: you check into a mysterious hotel where the laws of physics are well and truly broken, with no staff or any other guests to disrupt you as you explore hallways and rooms where the architecture seems to have a mind of its own.

The magic happens in how you move around this hotel. Unlike almost every other VR game where you push a thumb-stick to glide forward (or teleport if you’re not too comfortable), you just… walk. You physically walk through corridors, turn corners, step into elevators, and so forth, with the brilliance coming in how the game uses its trippy geometry to trick your brain. You might walk down a straight hallway, turn left, and walk down another straight hallway, and in the real world, you should be walking through your living room wall. But in the game, the environment subtly shifts and loops on itself, steering you in circles within your physical play space… it’s a bit difficult to put it all into words, but the topsy-turvy nature of exploration is perfectly implemented to make you feel like you’re truly walking across this warped hotel.

“It’s a glimpse into what VR can REALLY do when it stops trying to imitate traditional video games and starts leaning into its own unique strengths, with it turning small patch of floor in your home into a world of infinite possibilities.”

It’s genuinely disorienting, but I mean that in the best way possible. You’re constantly being redirected around this small space in your room, almost to the point where you feel that you’ve been walking for miles, but you’re always kept in the same space… it’s so wonderfully executed that it’s hard not to be impressed by the ingenuity of it all. You simply forget you are standing in a small square of your home and almost believe that you really are exploring this looping, architecturally impossible hotel, and honestly? It just feels like magic.

However, I do have to be brutally honest here: if you don’t have the space, you might want to skip this entirely. While there is a stationary mode for smaller areas or seated play, it completely strips the game of that magic I’ve just mentioned. Without the physical walking through the space, the experience loses that sense of wonder, and instead, you’ll find yourself battling the boundaries, glitching into walls, or simply struggling to reach items because the game logic expects you to physically step forward. The difference between the two modes is night and day, with one feeling like a true revelation in VR, and the other completely clunky.

When it comes to the gameplay, the puzzles feel balanced and well-designed to complement the pleasure of exploration. They aren’t brain-burners that will leave you stuck for hours by any means, but they are delightfully tactile and clever, with joy often not coming from solving the conundrum itself, but in seeing how the world reacts to you. You might pull a lever or press a button, and suddenly the wall in front of you slides away to reveal a massive staircase that DEFINITELY wasn’t there before, with the puzzles seamlessly integrated into the architecture around you. You’re effectively reconfiguring the hotel itself to create your own path, with it offering a satisfying loop that makes you feel like you are unlocking the secrets of the building’s anatomy. Puzzling enthusiasts may wish that it brought a few more complexities to its logic-breaking design, but it gets all of the fundamentals right to ensure the puzzles are satisfying.

Check out some screenshots down below:

That said, Hotel Infinity isn’t without some rough edges. It’s definitely on the shorter side – I wrapped it up in a single sitting, clocking in at just over an hour, and for the price, some might find that a bit steep (especially since the replay value is minimal once you know the tricks). There’s also a bit of jank to be found here and there, not only with the physics objects that can often act awkwardly, but also in a few environments where the illusion flickered due to a glitch or a jittery frame. There’s nothing too problematic at all, but just a few little things that can break the sense of immersion momentarily.

Developer: Studio Chyr
Publisher: Studio Chyr
Platform(s): Meta Quest 3 (Reviewed), Meta Quest 2, PlayStation VR 2
Website: https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/hotel-infinity/4385842211516163/