Recent reviews by TyFyTus

Lovely story based game that made me slow down.

Seems this game got review bombed but it definitely deserved it. Once you escape the first room the puzzles become near impossible to figure out. Even following a walkthrough it's impossible to understand the links between something that's locked and where to look for the solution. If there's no logic to work out and you're just mashing random letters and numbers together from multiple different places, that's not really a puzzle game, its trial and error.

The controls are a bit finicky to grasp, I definitely ended up just mashing all of the options. Would've been fine if the puzzles were enjoyable.

The sound/ audio mixing is TERRIBLE, everything is way too loud and the volume adjusters don't seem to control what they need to? The sliding puzzle in Barbara's room could only be turned down via the master audio, not the sfx which I already had way down. Furthermore the sliders seem to be manually turning down the db in a linear manner, which doesn't help when we perceive sound logarithmically. Basically you move it 30% and it sounds like its hardly moved.

The visuals and overall level design is pretty rough. I neither felt nor saw any difference playing medium vs ultra high. The textures could REALLY use that adjustment. There were numerous times where parts of the map just flickered and disappeared depending on the angle. This includes the stairs in the tutorial if you want to turn around and explore (which I would argue is natural for a puzzle game), and the plastic tarp on the floor of room 2. The lighting is especially bad in the first game, items are pitch black unless you face them toward the light. It also seems they made reading things even more difficult in updates. As far as I can see, old versions used to have a piece of paper as the directory. Now that its in a book the text is way too small. Hence you need to hold down like 3 buttons at a time to read anything, and that's when the text isn't flickering away like the rest of the game.

Finally, the topic of the game is really gross and uncomfortable.
I just felt the whole scenario seemed poorly handled. It didn't seem to make much of a comment on the trafficking and abduction of women, just using the scenario as a "real world escape room". Really terrifying concept.

EDIT: I have just learnt that Barbara (the victim of the first game) is the mastermind of the trafficking in the second, which is just bizarre.

I remember not enjoying it very much first time around, especially after playing other games such as Myst and The Room series. I had more fun playing when following a guide (to collect all the tokens). The rooms are too simple and the timer is both stressful as a casual player and not challenging when speedrunning. Might be better with stages of achievements like Portal 1 does (bronze, silver, gold times).

Not the worst game in the world, but I'm not rushing back to complete the extra rooms.

A great compact game, a breath of fresh air after The Room 3 (its been so long since 1 & 2 I can't remember them to compare). Animations have been sped up, enhanced by removing the walking between rooms. I felt like the eyeglass mechanic was a lot better used compared to the previous game, and the puzzles were challenging. They did a lot better at integrating the rooms together, especially by closing rooms as you completed them. Definitely helped it feel less like a fetch quest.

Controlling the submarine was unintuitive, and I think the game could benefit from subtitles (all of them can). They improved on the visual indications that something was correct/incorrect compared to the last game, but there are still some things that can only be easily interpreted through sound. Especially the sound puzzle lol. Also I know its about interacting with things in different ways, but I think the rapid clicking on the Strange Artifacts are inaccessible for some. I would appreciate a way to rebind controls. I wish they'd kept the middle-mouse button being the eyeglass from The Room 3. I want an option to skip animations (jump-cut to the end), and an option to change the double click to single click.

Minor things that would make a good experience a great one. One of the better puzzle games out there.

Animations are incredibly slow. I remember feeling this in the last couple rooms, but was especially frustrating by the time the alternate endings came along and the egregious amount of backtracking.

Plays like a worse version of Superliminal with the wake-puzzle-sleep routine. The story-line is irrelevant to the puzzles and plays out too slow and boring to be of any interest. Walk speed is less than half of what it should be. Overall very mild. Could've played into the horror a bit more. Hated the forced gender roles and the fakeout twist of the player potentially being a murderer, even though the wife was played as a villain for most of the story. Would've been better with just the puzzles, but those weren't that interesting or challenging either.

Subtitles were good to add, but aren't formatted well - there needs to be a dark box behind them to make sure the white text stands out against the majority white backgrounds. There's too much text on screen at a time (I had to stop gameplay just to move the camera to a place where I could read the text), and the text doesn't flash disappear which makes it hard to tell when the text changes.