We review The Room 3 for iOS, another excellent puzzle/adventure game in a beautifully crafted series.
If you’re a fan of point n’ click adventure or puzzle games and you happen to own an iPhone or iPad, that means you’ve already completed The Room and The Room 2 by now, right? Probably more than once, because they’re bloody brilliant. They’re genre-leading masterpieces, a prime example of intelligent, thought-provoking mobile titles designed with incredible care and impressive attention to detail. So I was pretty confident going into The Room 3 that it would be yet another solid entry in the series.
Spoiler alert: It’s just as bloody brilliant, if not more so.
The Room 3 basically picks up where the last game left off. Your exploits in The Null have captured the attention of a strange character known simply as ‘The Craftsman’, who lures you into a series of mind-wringing challenges to fully test your abilities. In other words, you once again find yourself exploring a variety of gorgeously-rendered environments and tinkering with mysterious ever-evolving devices that will fully test your logical and analytical puzzle-solving skills.
Presentation is again faultless, with your lengthy journey taking you through all manner of fascinating environments including a dilapidated bell tower and a funky observatory. Every room is packed with little details that bring them to life, while the haunting audio adds to the solemn and immersive atmosphere. You really do feel like you’re exploring ancient buildings that have been deserted for centuries, led by the Craftsman’s mysterious breadcrumb trail of messages.
The puzzles themselves continue the trends set in The Room and The Room 2. Like The Room 2, puzzles are usually spread across an entire room or sometimes several rooms, with you solving individual elements that then unlock another piece elsewhere. For instance, figuring out how to power on a generator allows you to mess around with a machine that was previously dead. Of course, that’s a very primitive example, with some of The Room 3’s puzzles involving dozens of different mechanisms and a lot of head-scratching.
The Room 3 is a lengthy adventure, taking several hours to complete even if you make liberal use of the built-in hints system (which prods you in the right direction before slapping you across the head if you’re still struggling). Combined with the beautiful presentation and well-considered puzzles, this game is worth every penny of its £3.99 asking price.
You can buy The Room 3 right now for iOS devices.
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