Mobile Review: The Room

I went and did it. I actually paid for a mobile game. I always considered buying a mobile app to be a risky venture, mostly because of all the cheap ripoffs. Free apps usually nag you with ads, but I can get past that, they need to make money somehow after all. I always knew the notion of buying a game should mean that I got the whole game, and wouldn't be held back by micro-transactions and have ads waved in my face every few minutes. So this was my first app purchase, and it was fantastic.

The Room is a sequence of exploratory puzzle-boxes, each new box is found inside the box before, but a complicated series of mechanisms and secrets stand between you and the depths of the rabbit hole. It gets a whole lot trippy when you obtain the eyepiece; an unusual device that can perceive the unperceivable, to view holes in our dimension. Just when you thought the puzzle boxes were hard enough, added dimensional puzzles are just more mind-numbing clubs to whack your brain.

With that said, the puzzles are not ridiculously vague and all are both logical (the ones well within dimensional limits anyway) and all can be solved when you follow the sequence. The hardest point is usually when you start, but they solved this with the eyepiece revealing a fingerprint or other marking to hint you where to begin. Eventually, things start to get disturbing as dimensions begin bleeding into each other, and while not leaving you on a cliffhanger, the game will be continued in a second part. Despite the shoestring story, it is still effective enough to provide some sort of purpose that doesn't hurt the immersion of the game. You are following a man who perhaps ventured too far down the rabbit hole, in the hopes you don't end up lost like him.

On the tech side, I have a Galaxy S2, not the latest I know, but it still a damn good piece of hardware. The game looked amazing and had fantastic 3D rendered graphics. Even when zoomed in on a part of the puzzle box, it was still impressive quality for a mobile game. The clicks, whirrs and groans of the puzzle box are all very well done and provide a hearty feeling of satisfaction.

The Room, while not too easy, it doesn't frustrate, which I like in a puzzle game. It was shorter than I expected unfortunately, but the reasonable price of a dollar feels balanced for what you get. And you get a very impressive game that is going to at least chew up a few hours and give your brain that little bit of a bashing.