Maybe someday, somewhere...

The story of developer Cing is just about as morose as their cult hit adventure title, Hotel Dusk: Room 215. Signed on to develop with Nintendo, Cing released several interesting games, including Little King's Story and Another Code (aka Trace Memory), but were unable to escape a fate of bankruptcy. They released Last Window: The Secret of Cape West, a Hotel Dusk sequel found only in Japan and Europe, before disappearing into the night.

However, in the fashion of Hotel Dusk protagonist Kyle Hyde, Giulio Vitali at Italian site Nintendon went on a quest to find answers; namely about what happened to Cing after their departure and what future the Hotel Dusk series may have. Vitali ultimately found those answers with former Cing vice president Rika Suzuki, who was kind enough to grant an interview.

Suzuki speaks fondly of the former studio, emphasizing their style choices and desire for a narrative continuing over several games:

We, at Cing, were developing games by creating unique characters and a world which could not be found in previous Nintendo games and also by preparing scenarios keeping in mind future serial works.

We also emphasized originality for graphical expressions and incorporated rendering, game elements and sound effects which allow users to be immersed in a story. Although our games seem to have less aggressive elements, all of them are extremely challenging titles whose details we worked very meticulously.

Suzuki went on to open a new studio, Bellwood, but still keeps in touch with other former members of Cing. While the desire to continue the story of Hotel Dusk remains, the rights to directly do so are currently owned by Nintendo:

Kyle Hyde’s story has not ended in myself, yet. However, we gave the right concerning Kyle Hyde to Nintendo as a publisher so I cannot make a new game featuring Kyle without any permission.

Having said that, I hope that I will be able to produce his story, which is still going on in myself, in some different way to be delivered to players.

It's rough to see someone so closely involved with a property unable to finish all they had in mind for it. Hopefully Suzuki and others from Cing will be able to do so someday, in one form or another. The full interview with Suzuki can be found at Nintendon.

[source nintendon.it]