Hotel Ébano

Cover art © gatowui, via itch.io

Introduction

Hotel Ébano, from developer gatowui, puts you behind the front desk of a small hotel in the rain and keeps you there until morning. The work comes in two halves. In daylight you are the receptionist: welcome each arrival, open the guest book, and give anyone with a reservation exactly the room listed under their name. Walk-ins can take any room still free, and when nothing is left you turn them away. Keys hang on a golden board on the wall, and speed matters, because four unhappy guests are enough to get you fired. Some visitors should never be served at all. Once night falls the job changes. The front door has to stay shut against whatever is moving out in the forest, dark stains have to be swept out of the living room, and any window that gets struck needs its curtain pulled before the glass gives way, though keeping curtains closed too long carries its own risk. From the third day the living room television switches itself on, and if something climbs out of the screen the hallway bathroom is your only hiding place. At midnight every door must be closed. The stay runs five days, each harsher than the last, with anomalies arriving sooner and guests losing patience faster. The hotel itself is a full first-person 3D space built from scratch without external assets.

Games like Hotel Ébano

• Five Nights at Freddy's: Night-shift survival horror where watching for threats and closing doors is the core loop.
• Papers, Please: Desk-job rule checking: people arrive, you verify names and paperwork, and errors cost you the job.
• The Mortuary Assistant: Short first-person night-shift horror built around routine chores while something unnatural escalates.

Similar picks are based on the public description and tags, not playtesting.

Who it is for

Good fit if you are:

• Fans of short horror games
• Night-shift horror fans
• Retro 3D horror fans

May not suit:

• Horror-averse players
• Multiplayer-only players
• Those wanting long campaigns

Highlights

• Split shift: front-desk service by day, survival duties by night
• Rule-based guest handling, including visitors you must refuse
• Escalating five-day structure with faster anomalies and less patient guests
• Night tasks include the front door, stains, curtains and the living room TV
• First-person 3D hotel built from scratch with no external assets

Questions about Hotel Ébano