Livestream: Escape from Hotel Izanami

About Livestream: Escape from Hotel Izanami

Livestream: Escape from Hotel Izanami was published by qureate and developed with Orgesta Inc. It came out on Nintendo Switch on April 15, 2021 and on Steam on June 10, 2021, and it is also sold DRM-free on GOG, where MediBang is named as co-publisher. Mio, Nana and Azusa run a small video channel, Nana Channel, and Nana wants footage from Hotel Izanami, a local haunted spot with no particular legend. The plan is an ordinary ghost-hunting video. Then Mio is separated from the others and a mascot costume that has come to life attacks her.

The game is played in side view through dark, ruined hotel corridors lit only by the girls' phone lights. Noisy Pixel describes it as a cycle of three parts: exploring and collecting clues, short visual-novel scenes where the girls call each other, and puzzle sections that need the right item. When the mascot appears, a figure in a pig head carrying a bloody hatchet, there is no fighting back: you run, find a place to hide and wait for it to pass. One hit is a game over, and you go back to your last save.

What frightens is mostly sound and space. There is little music; the girl's breathing and footsteps fill the silence, pictures fall from walls and electronics switch on by themselves, and the mascot's arrival lands as both a jump scare and a warning. Because the story is told through phone calls and stream footage, the camera angles feel like found footage: in one call, Mio's phone shifts and the mascot is standing in the dark behind her.

Between the chases the hotel sets traps of its own, which play out as illustrated scenes where you look around and use what you have found to free a girl, such as long black hair coiling around Mio on a bathroom floor. Notes, journals and photos left around the hotel explain how it came to this. The items you pick up and the puzzles you solve decide the ending; a player's walkthrough on Steam lists five.

It is also a fanservice game, as qureate's games usually are. The illustrated danger scenes let you touch the girls, and the store warns of partial nudity, sexual themes and strong language, though Noisy Pixel found these scenes short and minor next to the horror. Critics landed in the middle: OpenCritic's Top Critic Average is 70, with Noisy Pixel and IGN Korea both giving 7 out of 10. Players who want the cat-and-mouse tension of Clock Tower in a four-hour anime-styled adventure, and who do not mind the fanservice, are who it suits. A sequel, Livestream 2: Escape from Togaezuka Happy Place, followed.

How to play Livestream: Escape from Hotel Izanami

1. Explore the hotel in side view, moving room to room by the light of your phone.
2. Search every room for items and hints, and read the notes and journals you find.
3. Use items on the hotel's locks, mechanisms and puzzles to open a path out.
4. When the pig mascot appears, run at once and find a place to hide until it leaves.
5. In the illustrated danger scenes, look around for clues and use the right item to free the girl in trouble.
6. Save at the save points often; a catch sends you back to your last save.

Tips

• One hatchet hit ends the run, so do not try to slip past the mascot when it is close; run first and hide.
• Save after you pick up a new item or finish a puzzle, so a catch does not make you redo it.
• The map does not show where you are, so note landmarks such as the lobby sign and the stairs as you go.
• Search rooms thoroughly: the endings depend on which items you pick up and which puzzles you solve, so skipping one can lead to a worse ending.
• To see other endings without replaying everything, keep a separate save slot from before each choice that matters.

Questions