From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch
I’ve been excited lately! Fireproof Games recently released the third installment to their popular “The Room” series. It all started in September 2012 with the release of The Room, a physical puzzler, wrapped in a mystery game, inside a beautifully tactile 3D world. It was followed with a sequel, The Room Two, in February 2014. Last month, January 2016, gave us the release of The Room Three.
Fireproof Games describe themselves as “a team of 15 based in Guildford, UK and since 2012 we’ve been creating our own games.” So far, they’ve only released the three Room games and a virtual reality Jetpack game for the Samsung Gear. Many game companies churn out a lot of games that are mostly the same old thing with in-app purchases to try and get your money. Fireproof has a slightly higher price but delivers a quality game with no further cost. The games are also available for Apple and Windows. This mini-review is for the Android environment.
In The Room, your task is to open a safe. The safe is really a big box that changes as you solve the many puzzles, riddles, games and other bafflements. In the course of the game, you find a story unfolding about locating a strange machine. I estimate that it took me about 20 hours to complete the game the first time. I replayed it last year and got through a lot faster, even though I couldn’t remember a lot of the game play.
The Room Two picks up where the original game left off. You have to recreate the steps of the scientist and complete the strange machine. The first thing you notice is that the room is a lot larger and has several boxes. There are many more puzzles and many of them seem to be much more difficult. I don’t think any of them were repeats from the first game.
I haven’t yet finished playing The Room Three, but I can tell you that it is more diabolical that the first two. So far, the biggest difference I have found is that the game “world” is much larger. Instead of a single room, the game starts on a train. As you start solving puzzles, you soon find a secret entrance to a room. Once again, you find many puzzles, riddles, mazes, etc. The difficultly level has increased again. It appears that the machine you discovered in the previous games has put you in another world and you need to solve the game to get back. So far, there have been several rooms and many more puzzles.
The games all have spectacular graphics, perplexing puzzles, eerie music and are very playable on a touch enabled tablet or phone. I originally paid full price ($5.99) for each game. Over the years, the price has been reduced:
The Room is $1.10, The Room Two is $2.07 and The Room Three costs $5.55. I can happily recommend all them.
Thanks for reading.