Crimson Room: Decade
Dream Holdings
I never played
the original, but no matter. Here we are a decade later, in a crimson
room, with little purpose other than to get out.
It’s a
small room, not much bigger than the single bed and bureau that occupy
the space. A curtained window, a box on the floor, a calendar on the
wall – these and a few more things are all there is to help you.
At least at first.
Look around, find things, play
with things, pay attention. Lots of it. Think laterally, even weirdly,
try using things in places. Poke things, pull things, and do it again.
Watch and perhaps learn. Pause and think, ponder. Pick things up, turn
them over, take them apart. Bits and pieces have all sorts of uses.
Eventually your world might
(literally) turn. Things have moved on, but some things will have to
start again.
I spent a lot of time in the
room. I eventually got out, albeit with a little help from my (on-line)
friends.
I confess to being frustrated
more than once, but never bored. Which is a hard thing to achieve in a
tiny room. Yes, some of the puzzle solves are obtuse. Yes, some of the
hotspots almost impossibly tiny and hard to find. But the stark,
contained, simplicity of the room drove me to want to conquer it.
Clearly everything I needed was right there in front of me. I just had
to work it out. I didn’t have to retrace my steps over numerous screens
looking for stuff. I didn’t have to revisit everyone I had talked to in
order to see if they had any new information. What I had to do was look
again at the same four walls, the same handful of items, and figure out
what to do.
When you do, it's pats on the
back all round. Some solves are diabolically clever.
You will find letters which will
provide a back story and an insight into the previous occupant/s of the
room, which you can ignore if you want, but which add an interesting
layer. Disappointingly I only found nine of the ten, all the more so
because the missing one was an important link in the chain. A reason to
do it again.
I also only triggered about half
of the achievements. More reason perhaps to do it again.
You explore your small world and
manipulate objects with the mouse, and you move around using the
keyboard. About the only other thing you do is crouch, which is
essential to look under things and get close to objects. Played in the
first person, the game saves on exit and drops you back where you left
off.
While there is a reasonable
amount of detail in the visuals, there is also a spartan quality to the
presentation. Sound effects are present, but there is no spoken word
(you will eventually play a song however). Clicking in the game world
might elicit a written comment, and while I found manipulating the small
number of items fiddly at first, once I got the hang it was smooth
sailing.
You can choose to play in a
number of languages, tweak your graphics, resolution and illumination
settings, and play windowed if you want (though I don’t know why you
would). A grainy film starts things, and a cut scene ends them. In
between its just you and that room.
There is a lot to like about
Crimson Room: Decade.
I played on:
OS: Windows 10
Processor: Intel i7-3820 4GHz
RAM: 16GB DDR3
Video card: AMD Radeon
HD 7800 2048MB
GameBoomers Review Guidelines
June 2016
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