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.