The Room 4: Old Sins

Review

Fireproof Games just brought in the latest iteration of their most appreciated series, The Room 4 Old Sins. Having brief interaction with the past titles I was pretty excited to get my hands on the 4^th title.

Right off the bat, the game greets you with a classy minimalist UI with an amazing piece of background music constantly playing. As I got started, I could not stop appreciating the game’s progression system and the gentle scale-up of the difficulty level.

I won’t say the game is difficult in any way, but it’s a good, well-built brainstormer.  The first level took me a moment to get the grasp of things but I didn’t even break a sweat while figuring out the puzzles.

Each puzzle was well built and I went through one after another with a good flow. But as I progressed things started to heat up.  None of the puzzles were too difficult; they were very well balanced to accommodate the level and the flow of progression.

Plot: The sudden disappearance of an ambitious engineer and his high-society wife left the society anxious and confused. Investigations leading to their disappearance provoked the hunt for a precious artifact.

A brilliant detective has been hired to uncover this unnerving disappearance. Following the obscure clues leads the investigator to the attic of the missing couple’s home, and the discovery of a peculiar old dollhouse.

At first glance, everything seems pretty normal until the investigator starts to interact with this haunting dollhouse. It’s pretty obvious that the case of the missing couple can only be solved by going further down the rabbit hole.

Now the investigator must explore unsettling locations, follow obscure clues and manipulate bizarre contraptions to uncover the mysteries within Waldegrave Manor. 

Gameplay: The game starts off in the cramped attic of the missing couple’s manor, where I found an unsettling sight . . . an oddly haunting dollhouse. This surely doesn’t belong to a kid.

I investigated further using a handle investigation tool, a special eyepiece that helps visualize, interact with, and collect otherworldly items, puzzles, locations, etc.

As I progressed, everything seemed unclean and unsettling; this game didn’t give me any clear clues. But what kept me going was my love of exploring the game’s world, The Room’s amazing puzzle designs and puzzle-solving system.

The game's primary control scheme is super simple and minimalistic, using only the left mouse to select, control, collect, and interact with items, and right to back out. Absolutely loved this level of minimalism.

And then there’s the star attraction, the eyepiece, which helps the players to interact with otherworldly items, look for hidden clues, solve other-worldly puzzles, etc.

The first level ‘’Foyer’’ went flawlessly, I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed puzzles this much! Every single puzzle was very well thought-out and designed. Not only that, but every puzzle had a proper purpose and was connected to another one until I managed to finish the very last puzzle on a level. This made this whole process so much more enjoyable and gave me an amazing feeling that I was being rewarded upon each completion.

Each level is connected by multiple puzzles, and upon completing a set of interconnected puzzles, that level ends right there and I didn’t have to worry about that anymore.

Basically, there are two types of puzzles in this game: 1. Puzzles that you can see and interact with without the eyepiece, 2. Puzzles that require a set of actions to be performed before getting to it, and require the eyepiece in order to interact with and solve the puzzle.

I won’t spoil the joy of discovering the item interaction system, or the level of detail in this game, by describing them in depth; it is something truly amazing that I witnessed and I would like you, the player, to witness it first-hand without spoilers.

World design: Set in a haunted dollhouse in a cramped attic, upon interaction the dollhouse shows its true colors. After each successful completion of a set of puzzles, one or more new rooms will be available for your viewing.

Each room and playable area is very well detailed and appropriately colored. Each playable area comes with its own unique set of items, puzzles, clues, and details. An absolute joy for video game explorers like me.

Music and sound effects: As soon as you get into the game you will be greeted with a brilliant background music piece that was truly meant for this game. I kept it running throughout my playthough, as it gave my play session a great flavor.

The sound effects were okay I guess; I didn’t really pay much attention to them, other than the right-click back-out sound effect, which got annoying very quickly.

Review written by BiteMexD for Zeepond.com!