The Room presents the player with a series of strange boxes that have a number of physical mechanisms on them. The player is challenged to figure out how to open each one - typically by undoing a series of locks - to access another puzzle box within it. The game uses a variety of motions enabled by mobile device touchscreens to simulate actions in real life, such as looking around the device, turning keys, and activating switches. Through the game, a story involving the research of an unnamed person into the fifth
classical element, "
null," which is described in notes found through the various box puzzles.
The Room has received positive reception, and the iOS version received several awards. The game has sold more than 1 million copies and a free expansion was released in August 2013. The first sequel, entitled
The Room Two, was released for the
iPad in December 2013.
[2] The Room Three was released for mobile devices in November 2015.
[3] A fourth sequel,
The Room: Old Sins, is anticipated to be released by late 2017.
[4]
Gameplay
A core puzzle element of
The Room is a lens that allows the player to see secrets otherwise hidden. Here, the player must manipulate the camera view to match up the hidden number fragments to obtain a combination code.
The Room is a three-dimensional puzzle game. The game has a minimal story, in which the player is told by letters of a mysterious box in a room in a house; as the player solves the puzzles around the box, more notes from the same author - one who previously had solved the mystery of the box - are found, describing the box's use of an ethereal material called "Null", as well as showing the author slowly descending into madness.
On starting the game, the player is presented with the first of four puzzle boxes. The first box is offered as a tutorial to the game's controls, which demonstrate how to move around the box and interact with features of the box. The player has a small inventory for items like keys found in compartments in the box. A key inventory element is a special lens that, in-game, allows the player to see things made from the Null element that compose parts of the box. The lens can generally be equipped at any time to see these secrets, often requiring the player to manipulate the view to align secrets into a coherent symbol. The goal is to fully unlock each puzzle box, extracting a smaller but increasingly complex box within it.
Development
Fireproof Games is a British development firm borne out from six developers that had been working at
Criterion Games on the
Burnout racing series; together they decided to quit to form their own small team to provide outsourcable artwork to other developers. Their work was included in both
LittleBigPlanet games,
DJ Hero, and other racing titles like
Split/Second and
Blur.
[5] With the advent of the mobile gaming market through
iOS, they opted to develop in that space, hiring a programmer in January 2012 to create their own title,
The Room; during its development, the game only took two of Fireproof's team, the rest of the company continuing to work on other outsourcing jobs.
[5]
With
The Room, the goal was "to make the best iOS game we could, not just try to make a big console game for iOS", according to Fireproofs' Barry Meade.
[5] They wanted to emphasise the use of the touchscreen of mobile devices in its own unique way, similar to the success of
Cut the Rope and
Angry Birds. At the same time, they wanted to create a game that would be immersive for the player, and had devised the appropriate touch controls to provide tactile responses that worked alongside their art and music assets to help towards this.
[5]
The game was initially created for Apple's iPad (compatible with iPad 2 upwards) and released in September 2012.
[5] It was subsequently adapted and made available and adapted for the Apple iPhone 4s upwards & iPod Touch 5th Gen under the guise of
"The Room Pocket" as of 3 December 2012, which included a free first level and additional levels available for purchase.
[5] An Android version of
The Room was created for mobile devices as part of the
Humble Mobile Bundle which was released on 26 March 2013.
[6]
A free expansion to
The Room was released in August 2013 which updated the game with a new level and links the end of the first game to the sequel.
[7] The sequel,
The Room Two, was released on iTunes on 12 December 2013.
[8][9] In 2014, Fireproof Games announced that a third title,
The Room Three will be released for mobile platforms in 2015.
[10] In November 2015, the second sequel was released.
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