1. The Room is originally an iOS game but you shouldn't hold that against it. It plays just fine w/ a mouse on PC if that's how you chose to play. Relax.
2. Conceptually, this is straight forward: things have happened and you've got to solve puzzles.
3. You'd think, given the title, The Room would be escape the room type adventures but it's actually a series of virtual puzzle boxes. The intricacy and detail of the design of these boxes--just how pretty they are--is one of the chief appeals of the game.
4. If you are a big puzzle game fan, The Room will probably strike you as being on the easy side. I feel like this term is more damning that it should be but I can't help but to describe The Room as being a casual game.
5. Absent of a strong gameplay challenge The Room still manages to draw you in w/ its dense and well-crafted atmosphere.
6. The backstory is revealed through notes left behind by some unknown person who seems to vaguely be some sort of colleague of yours. He delved into some serious cutting edge alchemy and shit got heavy on him real fast. Now you have to solve a bunch of puzzles.
7. Part of the aesthetic of the game is really cool looking alchemical symbols. I can't tell you if these were made up by the game designers or drawn from actual alchemy because alchemy is useless and there is no reason to know anything about it.
8. There is an in game hint system which continually seemed terrible but then were always somehow helpful. It would be like, "Look at the box more," and you'd be like, "Damnit, I've been looking at the box. The only thing to look at is the box." Then you'd find yourself looking at just the right place in a few seconds. There is probably some sort of real life magic involved here. I'm just gonna leave that here.
9. My only real complaint about this hint system is it delivers the hints based on time and it occasionally gives you hints for something you already figured out so then you gotta just dick around a minute and wait for the next one.
10. I realize that using hints kind of undermines me saying this was a bit easy earlier and I don't care at all. The real reason the puzzle boxes are easy is they are mostly divided into discreet and easily digestible chunks so you don't need to hold the whole of it in your mind at any given time, just the part you are immediately working on.
11. As far as art and sound design, this reminds me very much of Myst. It's got this quiet tension and otherworldly smoothness to everything. Thankfully, the puzzles here are not nearly as obtuse as the ones in that seminal adventure title so The Room is not horrible to actually play.
12. Really, what's impressive here is just how much The Room draws you in w/ its fairly simple puzzles, smallish settings and sparse sounds. It is not a huge world it builds but it feels real. When you sit down to solve these puzzles, you will be sitting down until the puzzles are solved.
13. The ending was sort of abrupt and was almost painfully obviously meant to simply leave the door open for sequels. This is especially obvious writing this after no less than three sequels to The Room have already been released. I'm looking forward to playing them eventually though so good enough for me.
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