Pretty neat puzzle game to pass a few hours with. Its general gameplay loop is just solving a series of locks that lead from one to the next to slowly get to the center of a big puzzle box or similar situation.

A bit too often in this game, the solution to a puzzle is just to look around and literally find the answer, or to fit an object into a hole or something, which I don’t find all that individually interesting in the grand scheme of things. That combined with so many instances of boring stuff like a key leading to another key made me feel like this concept has some untapped potential.

Despite that, though, it just works as an overall package. The formula is very similar to solving an “escape room” or some puzzle in an adventure game, and it becomes somewhat addictive to methodically work through. There are enough puzzles that do have interesting solutions that it stays fresh for its short runtime.

The story was a bunch of weird tarot card / demon / astronomy mumbo jumbo that I didn’t bother making much sense of, but that at least led to increasingly complex and cool-looking puzzle situations. By the end, you have definitely graduated from safe-cracking to some pretty crazy-looking stuff.

So much of the puzzle stuff in the game feels like it could exist in real life that I found it slightly distracting when more fantastical elements stepped in, but I think that just speaks to the nice tactile feel achieved by the majority of the game’s content. There’s also just a pretty nice immersive atmosphere overall.

I’ve got the second one bought and downloaded already — looking forward to playing that at some point.

This is an excellent little puzzle game. I cannot really find any faults in it, other than its length: I wish it had lasted longer!

So the game is just basically examining these intricate object, like a Chinese box or a safe. These objects are filled with strange mechanisms, cogs, buttons, wheels, cranks, combinations, keys and key holes, handles, lenses, etc. You examine the object deeply, look for clues, and try to unravel the next layer.

The whole experience is very immersive: it feels like a real artefact that you've found in a dusty attic. There's so much detail in the wood grain, metal handles, velvet cloth, even dust particle effects. Meanwhile the sound provides resonant clicks and whirrs, plus a haunting ambient soundtrack. It's so satisfying when you figure out the next step and hear the cogs spinning and see the next layer unfold.

While you're doing this you come across little notes and other clues, hinting at an eerie story underneath it all. This game is a masterpiece, possibly the best $1 I've ever spent. While playing it felt a lot like Riven, just in terms of that eerie atmosphere, the attention to detail and the sense of wonder. I hope the sequels come to Steam.

I found this game on a "Greatest PC Puzzle Games Ever" list, so I decided I'd give it a go. I do like me some puzzles.

Have you ever gone to someone's house and seen that they had one of those little puzzle boxes sitting on their shelf? You know, the kind of simple-looking thing that you manipulate with your hands, where the goal is to get it open, or free the ball, or separate the linked parts, or whatever. Are you the sort of person who, when the other person walked out of the room, you couldn't resist grabbing the puzzle box and fiddling with it, just to see whether you could do it? If so, then you'll probably love The Room, since it's pretty much like what you'd get if you took one of those puzzle boxes, and then put 7 more layers of puzzle boxes inside of it.

The game starts you off in a single room with a big box, a key, an eyepiece, and a letter from someone who has signed off only as "A.S." The story in game is revealed through these letters, of which there are seven. A.S. seems to be some kind of scientist or scholar, and claims to have made a remarkable discovery that "The Circle" doesn't know about. He goes to investigate, and runs into some trouble as fictional characters always do when they mess around with powers that are beyond their ken. While there isn't a massive amount of story, it is surprising how much they manage to fit into just 7 letters and in-game imagery. There's an rich, ominous atmosphere that sits over the entire game, one that wouldn't be out of place in a horror game, although there are no scary bits in this game.

As far as the gameplay goes, the only negative thing I could say about it is that there's some amount of it that comes down to looking for hidden markings, secret compartments, and things of that sort. In general I'm not a big fan of what I think of as "blind scavenger hunts," as I generally prefer my puzzles to have everything made known upfront and then leave it up to my brainpower to put the pieces together. If you're the sort of person who likes the idea of combing over a room looking for any detail that's out of place, Sherlock Holmes style, then you may enjoy that kind of thing more than I do.

Other than that, though, there are plenty of actual puzzles to solve, and they're interesting and satisfying to complete. They're solved entirely through pointing and clicking. There's lots of variety among them, so that it never really feels like any puzzle mechanic is just a copypaste of an earlier puzzle. There are moments where, after managing to solve some puzzle, you'll sit there watching gears turn and mechanisms click, and a section of the box will open up to reveal an entirely new, strangely intricate contraption that will make you say, "Whoa, that's pretty neat."

One thing that deserves mention is the hints system. Implementing hints in a puzzle game can be quite tricky. Many games don't even bother with hints, which works fine in an easy game, but in a hard game can result in you sitting there completely lost for large periods of time. Hints that are too obvious can give the game away, and hints that are too vague are useless.

Here, the hints are done pretty well. There are 3 hints for any given puzzle you might be stuck on, which get revealed successively as you continue to spend more time on the puzzle without finding the solution. The first hint is kept fairly vague, with each additional hint pointing you toward the solution more specifically. Revealing hints is always optional (the hint icon must be clicked on by the player), and they can be disabled entirely from the settings if you prefer to play entirely unassisted. The hints point you toward the solution without being intrusive and without making you feel like you had to "cheat" on the game.

Overall, a solid 4 star. I don't know if I felt it was quite as good as the reviews make it out to be, since I don't feel that it will have a lot of staying power for me, or leave any impact on me afterward, as my favorite games do. There's around 3-4 hours of gameplay, spread across 4 chapters, and there's an epilogue now that didn't exist in the original iOS release. So, not a very large game, but still an enjoyable time overall.

I finally sat down and played through The Room over my recent vacation. It was much quicker than I expected which makes me feel a bit silly waiting so long to give it a try.

Puzzle games are incredibly hard things to design. You make the solutions too easy, and a player doesn't feel like they accomplish anything. You make them too obtuse, and a player gets frustrated. The room probably falls more toward the easy side, but the awesome presentation, animations, and design still allow for that feeling of accomplishment I was looking for.

The point of the game is simple. You must unlock an incredibly elaborate box in the middle of a room. You do this by pushing buttons, sliding objects, looking for secrets, etc., all with the touch screen of your device. Every aspect of the box feels like it has weight thanks to the look and animation, so using your fingers to manipulate everything just feels satisfying in a way most touch games lack.

The Room has hints built in that are easily accessible. This could be part of the reason I found the game a bit too easy. Whenever I hit any kind of roadblock, that hint icon would highlight and I would be tempted. I did my best to avoid using it as much as possible but I still gave in many times. I think it would be a better feature if it was a bit harder to unlock, maybe leaving it inaccessible until the player has spent several minutes without making any progress.

I'm definitely very excited to try the next game in the series soon. It was a wonderful experience and I can't wait to see what improvements they've made.