Rooms: The Main Building Review

Remember the tile slider puzzle you had as a kid? The tiles were in a 4×4 board and each tile had a number, from 1 to 15. There was one missing tile in the bunch and that allowed you to slide the other numbers around while you attempted to put them in numerical order. I had a lot of fun puzzling over such games when I was growing up. Have you ever thought it would be neat to use this idea as the basis for an entire game?

Hudson Entertainment decided that would be a great idea and created Rooms: The Main Building. I had the opportunity to play Rooms for the Wii and I was left with mixed feelings of the game as a whole.

The game starts out on your birthday. The doorbell rings, and you go outside to answer the door. You find a mysterious package and immediately upon opening the door you are transported to a strange place with a talking book. To get back home, the book tells you, you’ll have to travel through the rooms of the mansion.

In this tile slider puzzler, you’re in a room and need to get to the exit door. You have the option to walk into an adjoining room, if one is available, or move the room altogether to a more desirable position. By moving your character or moving the rooms you are able to traverse the maze to find the exit.

You can’t always walk from one room to the next. Some rooms have exits blocked by walls, floors or ceilings. Sometimes a door will block your way. Some doors are locked and you need to find a key; while others will only open one way. If you want to go up, you’ll need a ladder in your room. If you want to go down, you’ll need a ladder below you. There are other items that can help you traverse between rooms. A wardrobe, for example, will switch your tile with another one on the map. A telephone will transport you to another tile with a telephone. There are also additional play areas named ‘Rooms Street’ and the ‘Rooms Mansion’ that allow you to interact with non-player characters and often find useful items.

For variety there is also a level editor to create your own levels and a two-player competition that has you race against another player to see who can exit a room first.

This is a really inventive approach and I can envision it being fun. Unfortunately, the implementation here is just horrible. The first thing I notice as I watch the opening cut scene is that the text is small and hard to read. This is not something I expect on a 42 inch TV. Then next thing I notice is that the gameplay area takes up less than half of the screen real estate. There is a fancy menu that is always on the screen; and lots of unused space. I’m sure something could have been done to make the game play area larger; and only bring up the menu as needed.

The next thing that this game brings is dark colors. The game board is a mix of black, gray, and other dark colors. There was no need to use the same depressing color motif that many first person shooters use, but at least there were no zombies that needed shooting and the world did not end in the opening scenes. The lack of contrast reminds me of playing Return to Zork on a slowly darkening monitor; except in this case I cannot blame the dull color scheme on a dying TV.

Overall, I think that Rooms shows great promise, but simply does not lend itself well to the Wii format, maybe the DS version is an improvement but those are rooms that will stay locked until another day.