Here is a game that I got in the Steam Summer Sale as part of the veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime 2016. It is called The Room, and it’s made by the lovely people at Fireproof Games.

The Room is a puzzle game, in which you have to unlock a mystery box. The only thing you can interact with in the environment is the box, but it’s full of tricksy little things that make the opening of the box quite compelling. Levels of the game are cleared as you get deeper and deeper into the box. You start with a giant safe, and upon opening that you get an ornate puzzle box, which upon opening transforms again. I don’t know how deep the puzzle boxes go, but my hope is it’s puzzle boxes all the way down.

The Room started life as a mobile game, and it shows. Not so much in a bad way, but actual gameplay is limited, all you can do is click on stuff and hope other stuff happens. But it’s all very satisfying, twisting things and lining things up. There’s a base satisfaction to pressing switches that open secret compartments that doesn’t ever seem to diminish, even though throughout the game you certainly end up pressing lots of secret buttons. I thought the game would lose it’s charm quickly, but in the hour or so of puzzling I did, the game never got boring which was a pleasant surprise.

Will I be playing The Room again? I will! The Room is very basic, but what it does it manages to do very well, and I approve of what it’s trying to do. It seems quite short, but really interesting. I plan on powering through and solving the mystery of what’s in the box, all the while shouting “What’s in the box!?! What’s in the box!?!”. It will be great.

The Room Website
The Room Steam Page