Believe it or not, potato giant Frito-Lay’s strangest mix was combining the horror of video games and its well-known tortilla chip brand to create something different: Hotel 626. A blatant advertising action for Doritos, of course, but also a transgressive format for a 2008 in which media like Twitch were still in their infancy and YouTube or Twitter were still taking off. And despite its limitations, it was an experience in itself.
What is Hotel 626? If we get technical, it was a horror game designed for web browsers in which you played with both your PC screen and the microphone and WebCam. It only lasted about 15 minutes. or less if we go with a fixed shot, but it doesn’t matter what you did, since whatever you did you would be trapped in their world. And that we write in the past tense is no coincidence, since the game completely disappeared from the internet. We’ll get to it.
The game was released just in time for Halloween and it was clear from the beginning that Doritos was behind the initiative. However, far from promoting the flavor of its snacks, it was a superb mix between current first-person horror games with ingenious elements of modern Scape Rooms, encouraging us as players to break the fourth wall and let’s use our computer as a tool to play. To try to survive its horrors.
So much so that the game used photographs of us when playing, he mixed them with those of other real players and it is only as we progress during the game, between scares, that we realize it. That they have done them to us. That today would have been seen with different eyes and there would have been legal repercussions, but if we put it in context, that experiment achieved exactly what it set out to do: leave us uneasy. Above all, when after that very particular experience, we received a telephone call.
Hotel 626, the amazing horror experience perpetrated by Doritos
Unlike other games made with Flash or for browsers, Hotel 626 I had two prerequisites to play: the first was to reserve a hotel room, which was an excuse for us to provide our email and phone number, create an account and enable what was necessary, including some consent. Among others, for access the microphone and webcam.
The second requirement was much more interesting since, as indicated by its name, it could only be accessed Hotel 626 to the hours in which the experience was active: from 6 in the afternoon to 6 in the morning. The reason for the latter? You had to play at night no matter what. If possible, in the dark.
Logically, they did not wait for virality to be created (or the closest thing to that context in 2008) to promote the initiative. SnackStrong, the creators of the project, created their own mockumentary. Making it clear that this had nothing to do with previous Doritos initiatives.
A nivel visual, Hotel 626 It was a more or less pre-established tour through a cursed hotel that started with clichés from the movies and video games of that time. From the superb movie 1408 released just a year earlier in theaters The Ring or the Project Zero game saga. Anticipating that style of first-person environmental horror that would be definitively consolidated with the successful and also retired P.T. by Kojima or the most recent Silent Hill: The Short Message.
In fact, at the beginning there is more than just a spooky setting: we must take a photograph of a gruesome silhouette looking for the jump scare (or the screaming scare) in a closed room. Quite a cliché. However, as we progress through Hotel we see that the puzzles become more and more twisted:
- We must use our PC’s microphone to sing nothing to a sleeping girl in the middle of nowhere.
- We have to intentionally increase the volume of the PC sound to hear among the whispers the combination to escape from a room in which we are together with a tied madman.
- Later, we must find our own photograph among a room full of Polaroids with the portraits of other players. What’s more, the photo was taken by the game itself without prior notice.
- And if that were not enough, at some point in the game before completing the experience we will be called to the phone to receive instructions to escape following precise instructions.
As we mentioned, many of those ideas could not be done today. Not without more specific authorizations. In a way Hotel 626 It is a type of terror that could only be done in 2008, where the media existed, but not so many limits on the part of the users. And yet, the experience did not end there. Weeks later, after a period of time in which you may have forgotten having played it, one day at 6 in the afternoon you receive a new call that tells you:
“You will never be able to leave the hotel. And there is no escape from its horrors.”
Does the Doritos proposal seem surreal to you? As an example, here is a complete game of Hotel 626 played by DrossRotzank
And, if you prefer jumpscares in English, another one in which PewDiePie He checked into the Hotel and left those who listened to him with headphones red in the ears.
As expected, that advertising action soon became a phenomenon that, unfortunately, has been more or less forgotten decades later. And SnackStrong gave it its own even more twisted sequel: Asylum 626.
Asylum 626: much more horror, but much more commercial
The initiative of Hotel 626 had enough depth to take that idea to the next level, so SnackStrong upped the ante starting from two even more promising bases: instead of a cursed hotel, in Asylum 626 We would be locked and defenseless in a madhouse and the procedure to enter it was simply to grant permission and authorizations from a Facebook that had been largely standardized among Internet users. Needless to say, the latter was giving a master key to the creators of this new nightmare.
It might seem that those who returned to this experience were cured of their fears, but Asylum 626 He knew how to give new perspectives to the same premise: he used photos of our Facebook contacts in certain puzzles and also played with how close we are in front of the camera to generate scares. In addition, of course, to a much more twisted and visceral plot that took advantage of our visit to the asylum. And yet, this sequel destroyed all the genius of the original game.
To complete a substantial puzzle to continue on Asylum 626 Our ingenuity and courage were not enough: we were required to buy a bag of Doritos and that we used the promotional code that was included in it. Far from being an effective resource to take the immersion beyond the screen, what was achieved was to remove the player from the entire experience.
Needless to say, it is currently not possible to access any of these experiences. Both the addresses of Hotel 626 as Asylum 626 They lead to nothing and, given current privacy controls, it is highly unlikely or outright impossible that both games can be recreated. They are both children of their time and they came out when they had to come out. Neither before nor after.
Since then we have seen how the entertainment industry has evolved, the type of information that is shared has become more and better fenced and, we are not going to deny it, there are still snacks and drinks that provide content for successful video games. Will we see scares like this again? Just in case, Always cover your webcam when not using it.
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