App Spotlight, Editor’s Pick: The Room

I stumbled across an amazing puzzle app today: The Room (5/5 stars, guidance suggested, currently priced at $1.99).

Remember the wonderful, immersive, beautiful PC game Myst? That’s what this app will remind you of. The premise is relatively simple. You enter a room to find a cabinet with some items on top of it. A quick tutorial helps you find a special eyepiece and gets you through the first stage, in which you figure out how to unlock the cabinet. Hint: after you’ve read the first hidden clue, which is a riddle, closely examine the cabinet—every part of it—to look for the answer to the riddle.

Inside the cabinet, you find an ornate puzzle box, covered on all sides with intricate designs, codes, locked drawers and doors, and hidden panels. Your task is to solve the numerous puzzles the box presents in order to unlock each of its secret compartments in turn. As you do so, you’ll be reassembling clockwork machines, deciphering coded messages, seeking out matching symbols, and using the eyepiece you found in the first stage to reveal hidden writing and allow you to see through certain parts of the box.

As each puzzle is solved in turn, a new section of the box is opened and you’re presented with the next puzzle or piece of clockwork that needs repair. While you can probably get through most of the puzzles simply by experimenting with the different objects and messages that are revealed to you with each puzzle you solve, if you’re hopelessly stuck and have no idea what to try next you can always tap the clue button for help.

From the puzzle box itself to the many clockwork contraptions within, from the bizarre assortment of keys (many of which have rotating parts that must be properly aligned for the key to fit its respective lock), from an antique photo to a creepy, turn-of-the-century style film you’ll watch (once you’ve gotten the projector working, that is), everything is beautifully and realistically rendered. This game takes full advantage of the Fire’s various input and control methods, too. You’ll be tapping, swiping, and even tilting your Fire at times as you work your way through the puzzle box.

I was hooked on this game immediately; the 90 minutes I spent during my first session flew by like it was only ten.

From Amazon:

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Fireproof Games are very proud to bring you our greatest creation, a mind-bending journey filled with beauty, peril and mystery in equal measure. Be transported into a unique space that blends spellbinding visuals with intriguing problems to solve.

• Unsettlingly realistic graphics: The most natural looking visuals ever seen on a mobile device.

• Spine-tingling single finger controls: touch controls so natural you can play with one digit, to fully navigate this mysteriously beautiful 3D world.

• Fantastical pick-up-and-play design: Easy to start, hard to put down, the secrets of The Room will immerse you before you even know you’re playing.

• Compelling layers of mystery: think you know what you’re looking at? Think again.

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The Room – highly recommended to fans of puzzles, steampunk and Victoriana.