It all began with Cube Escape back in April 2015. Two mobile games were released simultaneously, Cube Escape: The Lake and Cube Escape: Seasons. Each, at first glance, appeared to be part of the current trend for both digital and real-world escape room games, in which you solved puzzles to set yourself free from some kind of intricately locked enclosure. But very quickly it became apparent that this was something different. Rusty Lake is not the sort of place from which anyone escapes. And ten years later, with a brand new game to celebrate, we’re still trapped within its Lynchian aberrations.
Ten years and an extraordinary 18 games, one film, and a table-top RPG later, people are still trying to piece together the mysteries of Rusty Lake, the various buildings in the very small town (the Cabin, the Chapel, a Cave, a Mill, the Vanderboom home, and of course the Hotel), and the unsettling figures who appear throughout its history like Mr Crow and Mr Owl. We know the Lake needs our memories, and we know that once the negative ones are extracted from people—in the form of black cubes—they become Corrupted Souls. And we know there’s a damned weird obsession with shrimps. But the real joy of Rusty Lake is that, as with the David Lynch films that heavily inspired it, we also know complete, coherent answers will always be just out of reach.
Earlier this year, with the 10th anniversary looming, I thought it would be a good time to replay every game in the series, in release order, to try to get myself on top of what these games are about. I’m genuinely delighted to report that at the end of this process, from Cube Escape: The Lake through to Underground Blossom, and indeed the shadow-dropped-as-this-post-goes-live The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show, I’m none the wiser. I can tell you these are games about burdened families, dark secrets passed through generations, and a lake with an insatiable desire for memories, but the “why” and the “how” fade into irrelevance in the shadow of such an incredible atmosphere of haunting malevolence, and a permanent wicked glint in the series’ eye.
On a more pragmatic level, these are games created in that modern, touchscreen-driven style of a point-and-click puzzle game. You explore locations, gather items for your inventory, and listen to the peculiar utterings of the inhabitants, attempting to solve puzzles that usually end up pointing toward the appearance of mystical cubes. But rather than the genre’s usual predictable results, in a Rusty Lake game you’re far more likely to discover that using the hammer on the nail causes a crack in a wall to unveil a fish, which when used on the right character will cause them to die, falling to the ground with their mouth open, into which you then travel to discover an impossible chamber within their body. There’s one game in which you slice off a man’s nipple in order to travel into the bizarre realm hidden behind it.
Yet despite this overtly surreal approach, the Rusty Lake games maintain a sense of order, a notion that—even if you can never quite grasp their wraith-like tendrils—there is an internal coherence here. (The wonderful Mike Fahey (RIP) wrote about that aspect here.) In the same way as Lynch’s Lost Highway confidently casts a dream-like spell on you such that you understand why watching a video of a man murdering his wife would mean the same events now have to have happened in reality, these peculiar games sweep you up in their own internal rationale.
Over the years I’ve been covering the series, I’ve commented that Rusty Lake’s weakness is that it wears its Lynch influences too clearly on its sleeve. Sharing an interest in the inherent spookiness of owls is one thing; writing “THE OWLS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM” on a wall in Rusty Lake Paradise was pushing it too far. But, importantly, the series has established so many of its own distinctive themes that crop up throughout, giving that sense of timelessness to a collection of games that can be set a hundred years apart.
So in the end, it’s really rather incredibly lovely that the new game, surprise-released today, features a small, lovely tribute to the late filmmaker. And fittingly, it’s hidden outside of the game within the game…Yeah, it’s appropriately strange.
The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show is seemingly a game dedicated to the rabbit-headed character who first appeared in Rusty Lake Hotel, and indeed is served as the game’s second dinner. (Seriously, you have to play it.) It’s presented as a series of mini-puzzles, a stage show being put on by the magician rabbit, in which you must arrange objects and colors or successfully sproing baby rabbits from a top hat such that they land in another hat on the floor (rather than miss and land in a bloody splat), in order to bring on the next scene. And honestly, as I was playing, I was thinking—hmmm, this isn’t quite it. But the game knew that, and then a whole bunch of other stuff happens, and it’s yours to discover.
But it’s safe to say it’s a fittingly unnerving celebration of ten years of these unnerving games, deliberately indulgent, and packed with fun callbacks to the series. It’s going to be fun to discover if it’s ever considered canon, but since Mr. Rabbit has been haunting the Lake in his altogether more unpleasant form since 1894, we have to assume that his magic act took place before he arrived in the Hotel, so pre-1893.
What’s so fun here is Magic Show allows the developers to let their usual sly winks come to the forefront, break the frame a little, and make sure you know that they know that you know they’re playing you. In fact, despite ostensibly having finished it, I’m still plugging away at a few remaining—extremely difficult—puzzles, to try to find every Easter egg hidden within.
And, at the same time, there’s also a new short film—The Intern—to complement the new game! It’s 10 minutes long, and has the developers wonderfully spoofing themselves as an intern tries to publish Mr. Rabbit, but discovers the Rusty Lake office is as much of a series of weird puzzles as the games they make.
If you want to get started with the Rusty Lake games, there’s no better place to begin than the Cube Escape Collection. Because those original games were made in Flash, and Flash is no more, they’ve been remade in a modern engine, and re-released in one package which—ludicrously—only costs $5 on Steam, and is a free download on iOS and Android, with similarly priced in-app purchases to unlock the all nine games.
Beyond the Cube Escape series, there are what seem to be known as the “Premium Games,” all of which are included in Steam’s Rusty Lake Bundle alongside the Cube Escape Collection and the separately released Cube Escape: Paradox. The latter is something quite extraordinary—a two part game that’s emboldened by a live-action short film. You can also watch that film for free via Steam, or indeed on YouTube, immediately below.
Of those premium games, not all have “Rusty Lake” in the name. So make sure not to miss The White Door (an incredible story of a man trapped in an asylum), Underground Blossom (the most recent full game, entirely set on a train platform), and 2022’s The Past Within, a co-op puzzle game set in the Rusty Lake universe in which each player sees a completely different version of the game, requiring you to coordinate to solve its puzzles. (And don’t forget the remastered Samsara Room, a game originally released in 2013 before Rusty Lake, but very much in the same universe.) They’re all on Steam and mobile, and personally, I prefer to play them as mobile games, ideally on a good-sized tablet.
I have so much fondness for this series, and am constantly impressed by the lengths to which the Dutch developers have gone to innovate within their deranged little world. I love how chilling it can feel, despite being a cartoonish series filled with tongue-in-cheek goriness. I love that every time I see a Corrupted Soul, no matter how much they appear in every game, I get the shivers. I also love how many questions I have, and how much I don’t want them answered. Congrats on ten years, Rusty Lake, now please make me many more games.
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