Without a doubt, my favorite mobile games of all time are the four The Room games. These escape room-style games are packed with interconnected 3d puzzle boxes that are as fun to look at as they are to solve. The Room VR: A Dark Matter is an uncompromising new addition to the series and the first exclusive to VR. Playing it feels like stepping through the screen to solve these elaborate puzzle boxes with your own two hands. I can't help but feel like this is the way these games were always meant to be played.

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Finally Inside The Room

I can't overstate how satisfying it is to physically pick up the objects in the game to exam them. The simple act of putting a key in a lock and turning is so responsive and smooth, it makes the idea of dragging a finger across the screen to insert a key seem almost laughable.

It's crazy to think how direct the translation from mobile phone to VR is for this game. It's still first-person, obviously, and each puzzle box is spread out through different rooms in each level. You can teleport between them and look around the level freely. The teleporting, while consistent with the rest of the series, is the only kind of immersion-breaking thing I noticed. The rest of the game is about examining these puzzles from all sides, picking up objects, turning them over, assessing, and figuring out how the pieces move and fit together.

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I delighted in the physics of things. You can't drop or throw objects, they simply vanish back into your inventory when you release your grip, but there are jars you can rattle and objects that react to being turned over in realistic ways. There's a lot less manipulating objects in your hands than in other games in the series though. I can't actually remember anything you can pick up and interact with using both hands. There was one point when I held two halves of a scarab in each hand and tried to fit them together, only for my controllers to bump into each other. This is the kind of game that would benefit tremendously from hand tracking, something the Quest is already experimenting with. I hope to see that technology utilized in the next one.

The Rush Of Opening A Box

The Room games work so well because the loop is so incredibly rewarding. Every object in your inventory is some kind of key, the lock is hidden somewhere in the level (sometimes multiple steps away) and, when you open that lock, it reveals another key. Sometimes you get on a run: open a box, recognize immediately where the key goes, and suddenly you're solving 3 or more puzzles at once. Every time a box finally opens, the tension built up over time while you searched for solutions is instantly released. It's brainteaser stuff that makes you feel smart by playing it, but it's also the thrill of exploration.

Sometimes what you open isn't a box, but a door. That door can lead to amazing new rooms in the level you weren't expecting, filled with new puzzles to solve and objects to study.

This is the experience of all The Room games, but The Room VR puts you in that physical space in a way that the other games simply can't. It's not just about the immersion of freely looking around or turning an object over in your hand, it's also about the intimacy of each moment. There's nothing in the real world to distract you, it's just you and the puzzles.

Better Levels Than Ever

All of The Room games incorporate a bit of magic and dark fantasy into the story and puzzles. They dabble in cosmic horror and are generally pretty spooky games. They don't do a great job of giving each level a strong identity, though. I haven't played them since Old Sins came out in 2018, but I can't specifically remember the setting of any particular level.

Each of the levels in The Room VR has a very strong theme and identity that makes all of them unique and memorable. The tutorial level takes place in a detectives office with detective-office-appropriate puzzles, such as accessing an evidence locker. The first official level takes place in a museum with the goal of opening up an Egyptian sarcophagus. Each puzzle is thematically appropriate for the setting and each box you open gets your one step closer to opening the sarcophagus. Each level has its own visual style that feels very cohesive.

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That's not to say the puzzles are better than ever, though. The Room is at its best when multiple boxes need to be opened simultaneously, as opposed to solving one completely and moving on to the next. The Room VR interconnects many puzzles, but it never reaches the complexity that some of the later mobile games do.

There's a shrinking mechanic that was also used in Old Sins, which allows the player to enter certain puzzles to solve them from the inside. These are probably the strongest puzzles in the game. One of them requires you to create pathways by turning platforms while outside of the box before shrinking down and entering to box to turn switches inside. That puzzle has really strong micro-progression within a much bigger level. Once you solve it, those ideas are never used again, it was completely it's own thing. I love that about these games.

Move Over Alyx, We Got A Masterpiece Here

The Room VR is on the shorter side, even compared to the mobile games that preceded it. There's only a handful of levels, but each one is crafted so beautifully I can't find it in me to complain about the length.

I do think the puzzles are on the simpler side compared to the rest of the series. It felt like the physical interactions like pulling ropes and turning cranks were the focal point of the game and the super elaborate multi-stage puzzles of previous entries were simplified for VR. Traditionally there's been two-three years between each game in the series. I sincerely hope we won't have to wait that long for more The Room VR. This is one of the best uses for VR I've ever experienced.

An Oculus Rift review code was provided to TheGamer for this review. The Room VR: A Dark Matter is available now on Oculus, Vive, Index, and WMR.

The Room VR: A Dark Matter

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