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The Spectrum Retreat

BAFTA provided "a foot in the door" for young dev Dan Smith

His game The Spectrum Retreat is coming this year.

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The Spectrum Retreat is a puzzle game from BAFTA Young Game Designer winner Dan Smith, and we got the chance to talk to the man himself at London's Tobacco Dock recently, where he told us exactly what the game is about.

"So The Spectrum Retreat is a first-person, narrative-driven puzzler that's set in an art deco hotel," he explained. "You wake up one day inside it with no memory of who you are, and you have to try and get out, but all the staff are trying to keep you inside, and the way you progress is by solving increasingly difficult colour-based puzzles."

"I started the game five years ago as kind of a way to experiment with game design, and it's one of the first mechanics I really tried, with the colour swapping mechanic that's in there. And after that it was about extrapolating that and trying new mechanics that improved how fun it was and allowed you to create more puzzles, so it just came from that initial desire to come up with something simple and then expand on it."

We also asked about what the experience of being a BAFTA Young Game Designer has been like, to which he said:

"Really good. I mean, I owe a lot to what BAFTA have done to help me get through it. I was working on the game for three years before I got involved with them, and since I did I've had a lot of feedback, I've got to meet people, developers that have offered advice and feedback on the game, I've got funding on the game, so being a part of that has been a really useful foot in the door for the industry."

For the full interview on The Spectrum Retreat, where Smith talks about other things like balancing university and his work on the game, check it out down below. Have you had your eye on The Spectrum Retreat?

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The Spectrum Retreat

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The Spectrum RetreatScore

The Spectrum Retreat

REVIEW. Written by Sam Bishop

"After having sat down with the finished article we found ourselves reflecting on whether the final product lived up to that early potential. The answer: absolutely."



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