Does horror truly begin in The Cecil: The Journey Begins?

The Cecil Hotel, widely known for its checkered past and mysterious incidents, is the site of Genie Interactive Games‘ debut first-person horror title The Cecil: The Journey Begins. Come with me on a journey of hauntings, serial killers, and terrible health and safety that would make the Umbrella Corporation proud.

Our story begins with the protagonist, John, trapped in a cell at the Cecil Hotel. After finding his way out of this escape room-esque puzzle he arrives in the hotel lobby to explore his surroundings and attempt to find his wife Sarah. The environment here is sufficiently creepy and definitely reminded me of the Spencer Mansion of the original Resident Evil.

Unlike the mansion, however, the puzzles throughout the hotel are less than convoluted, and more about running backwards and forwards across areas of the hotel with a single item to progress. In my eight hours of playtime, I feel that I spent at least a third of it simply running from one area to another engaging in pointless busywork simply meant to pad out the game’s length. What started as being fairly simple and inoffensive in the beginning, became increasingly frustrating and ridiculous towards the game’s mid-section and tiring by the end.

The Journey Begins also has very few options. I would highly suggest turning off motion blur before starting. There’s also no indication of which options are already selected so you have to just press buttons and wait, hoping that something changes visually.

The game is also terribly optimised. I have a pc far above the recommended specs and was frequently finding the framerate fluctuating wildly between mid-30s to as low as 5 with no indication as to why this was the case. I sincerely hope that this is something the creators can address in patches moving forward because, while the game is still playable, it is very dark in a lot of places. The constant framerate issues, compounded with gameplay frustrations, led to a less-than-ideal gameplay experience. There’s also only one achievement which is for beating the game and it didn’t trigger for me which is a shame.

While The Journey Begins has a decently strong start, the plot begins to meander somewhat and never feels like anything has much of a payoff. You end up connecting to areas of the hotel and think “Ooh, this must be a puzzle that I return to later” but no, it’s just there. This could well be a case of cut content or the development team being overly ambitious but a slew of sections of the map, much like parts of the story, could do with editing and being trimmed down to a tighter package.

I mentioned the Spencer Mansion earlier, and while Resident Evil must certainly be a key influence, many parts of the game feel like the Baker House of Resident Evil 7 more than anything. You can also find a key for room 404 which upon entering displays a whole series of photos and cards of people who seemingly played the game while in its demo phases or supported the development financially. I like it when developers give back to the community like this and thoroughly appreciated perusing the room.

While I may have issues with the story and gameplay, I was very impressed with the auditory experience. The sound effects hit just right and the limited music comes in at just the right times for an excellent showcase of “less is more“. The game is also fully voice-acted and while there are a couple of line reads that feel a little off, I was drawn in by all the performances. It’s always good to see young studios still working with real talent.

The Cecil: The Journey Begins is quite a mixed bag. There’s a lot of squandered potential and performance which need to be seriously looked at. However, the bones are there to make something really great.

With a sequel hook at the end of the credits, I’m certainly very interested to see how the studio takes the lessons learned from the production of this game and carries them on to their next project. I just hope they take the time to patch and fix the performance issues here BEFORE then.