Roman Sands RE:Build Hands-On Impressions — The Wildest Hotel Ride

It can be difficult for me to find a game that keeps me completely focused. I like for a game to be a complete distraction in the full sense of the word, a unique and fast-paced experience that makes me lose track of time. Not only does Roman Sands RE:Build accomplish all of that, but it’s incomparable to literally any other indie game I’ve ever played. That’s really saying something, considering all of the great games that have been released over the last few years.

Story — We’re Not Getting Employee Of The Month

Taking place over a day, your objective in Roman Sands RE:Build is to collect items and travel through the different rooms and floors to tend to the hotel guests before the end of the night, earning EXP along the way. At the end of the day, you’ll awaken to a new day where you need to do everything you just did all over again, using the upgrades that you earned to further your progress and unlock new areas. Although there’s a sense of repetition that comes from replaying the same day over and over again, the different times of day contribute to unique dialog and progressions with NPCs. As a result, the story begins to slowly unfold and reveal itself, proving to be far more complex and horrifying than it originally lets on.

Roman Sands RE:Build’s characters help drive this point home. There are only a handful of characters, but they give you a noticeboard full of objectives to complete and explore. I was a little disappointed that the characters don’t necessarily interact with one another, but their relationships are still apparent in their dialogue options. They’ll be weird with you and ask to deliver items to one another, keeping you at the center of their affairs the whole time. When the new day begins, you can choose to deliver items to different characters just to see what happens. In short, every day is your oyster.

The story isn’t straightforward and requires you to piece together what’s going on using both the relationship that NPCs have with one another and the problems going on in the hotel. There’s also a story involving your player character because, well, you definitely don’t remember being a hotel employee before all of this. Discovery plays a huge part in moving the story forward, and I loved both knowing and not knowing what comes next.

Gameplay — Keep It Moving

The gameplay for Roman Sands RE:Build is incredibly unique, with the only comparison I could make being the Danganronpa series. It’s a first-person collectathon in a way that asks you to deliver or use items in order to earn EXP and unlock new areas. Moreover, there is a unique visual novel aspect to the way that dialogue is handled. Unlocking new areas and upgrades also adds more gameplay elements, such as Gacha collecting and puzzle solving.

As you play through a few days, one after another, you start to get the hang of things and who’s going to ask for what. The travel markers that turn your walking speed into lightspeed also help in getting things done faster. Before long, you’re speeding through areas, delivering items, talking to NPCs, and fixing things to try to earn the most EXP possible without wasting any time. You can get everything that the NPCs could want as you start realizing where they are going to be and what they are going to ask for. All the other gameplay elements just help fill in the gaps between collecting items to make everything more interesting.

Graphics & Sound — A Night At The Arcade

I firmly believe that the game would be nothing without its sound and art design. The art style during gameplay is cel-shaded and makes incredible use of dark colors that still pop. When you get into dialogue, the art style for the characters changes to add more context to their personalities and features. It’s clear that a lot of thought went into the choice of architecture, room design, and character design since players were going to be over-exposed to them due to the nature of the gameplay.

When it comes to the sound and music, it seemed like there was a sound effect or a continuous song for everything. There was a sound for ranking up, a sound for talking to NPCs, a sound for completing an objective; you get the idea. I absolutely loved this because I felt that it helped grab my attention, especially when paired with how fast the gameplay is. All the audio cues gave me the feeling of being in an arcade, with bells and whistles all around while music played loudly in the background. It was a little overwhelming at times, but I can’t imagine the game without these sounds.

Closing Thoughts — Press F To Skip Time

Time needs to pass by faster so that I can get my hands on the complete Roman Sands RE:Build game; where’s the F button? An experience as unique as this game doesn’t come along very often and what I played left an immense impression on me. I immediately fell in love with the visuals and gameplay, diving in for several hours upon my first time booting up the game. Almost everything else I discovered in my playthrough felt like a happy accident made specifically for me. I’ll be the first to say that overall, it’s a pretty niche game that might not be for everyone who isn’t a fan of everything I explained above. However, it’s one that definitely deserves recognition for being as unique and attractive as it is.