I wrote
before that Point-and-Click games were my second favourite gaming genre ever
and that I gladly welcomed them in any shape or form. So when I heard about The Room, I knew right away that I had
to try it. Which I did—to my great delight, shall I say.
The Room, developed by Fireproof Games and published in
2012 for iOS and 2013 for Android, is a game that differs wildly from what you
can usually find on these two platforms. Android and iOS games routinely tend
to be casual affairs that involve simple gameplay mechanics, which The Room is anything but; this game
appears as a refreshing island of brain-mashing in an ocean of uninvolving
casualness.
The best
way to describe that game goes as such: it’s basically a pint-sized version of Myst, in which you explore boxes instead
of worlds and tinker with tiny devices instead of huge machineries. Apart from
this scale difference, it follows the Myst
template to a T by featuring first-person view, beautiful and sleek graphics
and an atmospheric soundtrack that sets up a contemplative mood without
hindering the player’s thinking process. It goes without saying that you can’t
die in any way, which makes The Room
a very relaxing experience at its core—albeit an intellectually intense one.
As one may
expect from a Myst-like game, the
story is conveniently vague and laden with mystery. It treats you with
appetizing clues about what lurks beyond the borders of your current knowledge,
providing thus a great incentive to keep playing. Not that you’ll really need
it, if you’re a Point-and-Click aficionado: the enigmas alone are enough to
keep you hooked to the point of obsession. They are clever, stimulating and
come in a variety that’s quite impressive, considering that you’re only dealing
with boxes of various shapes during the whole game.
As the
title indicates, the whole action takes place in a single room. That room
contains a cabinet that itself holds several secret-laden boxes, contained in
one another like Russian dolls. You have to investigate each one of these devices
to uncover hidden mechanisms and secrets that will allow you to progress to the
next step and further uncover the underlying mystery that brought you here in
the first place. This is a manner of speaking, for let’s be honest: you won’t
uncover that much in this first installment. Fireproof Games planned to release
several games from the get-go and thus kept the biggest chunk of the mystery
for the latter episodes, and who could blame them? But back to The Room, 1st. Once again, it
faithfully follows the Myst template
regarding the unfolding of the story and the puzzle solving: you start in that
unknown room with only the most basic information about why you’re here and
what you’re supposed to do, and you have to figure out how to solve the puzzles
and progress all by yourself. No instructions, no in-game clues woven into the
narrative: you have to tinker, experiment, and most importantly, think—very often out of the box, both
figuratively and literally.
It’s worth
noting that despite taking its cue from Myst,
The Room is significantly easier than
any Myst installment ever released. The
enigmas are nowhere near as complex as the ones featured in the Myst series, and the mechanisms involved
are much simpler and easier to crack; and should you still be stuck, the game provides
you with some complimentary clues that can reorient your thinking process in
the right direction. As a Point-and-Click purist, I am slightly offended by
this; but I guess it’s a better option than aiming straight for an FAQ as soon
as you’re stuck. And of course, nobody forces me to use these clues in the
first place, so it’s fine.
I’ve
referenced Myst quite a lot until now,
and that may lead you to wonder if The
Room is nothing more than a less ambitious, watered-down version of that
mythical Point-and-Click. Well, rest assured: there is fortunately more to The Room than just a copy-paste of Myst. The atmosphere, for one thing, is
very distinct: The Room features a
darker, more ominous setting, with supernatural undertones quite reminiscent of
Lovecraft’s short stories. The fact that you deal with small contraptions while
being confined to a single room gives a claustrophobic feeling to the whole
experience, which is completely at odds with the openness of the Myst series that sends you out to
explore worlds.
However, if
there is one single department in which The
Room outshines and betters Myst a
thousand times, it has to be the gameplay—or rather, the perfect matching of the
gameplay and the hardware. Touchscreen devices are absolutely tailor-made for
Point-and-Click games: no hardware ever can provide a smoother, more satisfying
Point-and-Click gameplay than a device that lets you poke and probe every
corner of the screen with unmatched precision. And this is exactly the kind of
experience that you’ll get by playing The
Room on a tablet: a near-perfect gameplay in which hardware and software
blend perfectly and seamlessly in a match made in heaven. Myst, with its use of the mouse to scroll and explore the
environment, could sometimes be clunky and lack much-needed precision. The Room virtually eliminates these
problems and offers an amazingly fluid gameplay experience that lets you rotate
the camera in every direction, zoom as much as you want and explore every nook
and cranny in the most precise way imaginable. Some enigmas even take advantage
of the hardware in a way that’s delightfully imaginative and clever. Of course,
the touchscreen may be slightly unresponsive at times, or the camera may be
difficult to position properly; but these are only occasional inconveniences
that cannot undermine the whole fluidity and efficiency of the gameplay. The Room is an incredibly intuitive Point-and-Click
game that no aficionado of the genre should miss, for it may well be the game
that we’ve dreamt about all these years while struggling to position the cursor
on the right pixel.
Despite
being a near-perfect and utterly enjoyable Point-and-Click game, The Room has a glaring flaw that can
simply not be ignored: it’s criminally short. A Point-and-Click veteran could easily
clear that game in a single afternoon, especially if they’ve played Myst before. Talk about brevity!
However, a short but excellent game is better than a long and boring one, and
Point-and-Click games are still too rare to be sniffed at, no matter how
concise they may be. Given that The Room
comes with a very fair price tag to boot, there is really very little reason to
complain. Better purchase that game and enjoy it to the fullest, for there is
much to love here. Good sales may even encourage other developers to create
more Point-and-Clicks and lead to a rebirth of the genre—who knows? At least,
it’s definitely something I would wish for.
So, I
really had a blast playing The Room,
and I’m now waiting for the opportunity to play the second installment, which
should come in a couple of months. I really hope it will be as great as the
first; but if the reviews are to be believed, it should be the case. As for now,
thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!
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