The Room Three

I've really enjoyed The Room 1 and 2 but this one feels like they focused so much on atmosphere they forgot it's a puzzle game. Less puzzle, more memorize weird symbols, spin some cranks and levers, and line shapes up together. There's so much backtracking with very slow animations from room to room. Backtracking is 80% of the gameplay. There's guidance when you don't need it and no guidance when you do. It's a shame because I think that first puzzle room was the coolest in the series so far. And the story and atmosphere are wonderful. But it's barely a puzzle game. There's a maze section which is the epitome of every frustration I've had till this point. The movement is slow because it is a point & click, and yet it requires a LOT of movement (like I said, Backtracking The Game), so it makes going between places excruciating as they decided this game needed a bigger scale. And the puzzles are not hard to solve, just tedious and convoluted. I know where I need to go in this maze because there's not many options, there's no map of the maze I could've found and no real dead ends. I just go until I get places. I know I need to step on each platform so I just have to find all three, and then I have to get back to the center. It's not complicated, just annoying. I've got ending 1, and I knew there were other secrets I could find but literally the only reason I didn't pursue them was how annoying it was going back and forth. Soooo. I might try them because I find the story really cool but man. I don't know. If you like The Room games thus far, it's worth it for story. One and Two were amazing, so I'm hopeful Four will be lovely too, at least.

Least fav of the series so far. It a lot of: "find square peg that goes in the square hole" and then multiples of 3-5 second animations that you have to wait an additional 2 seconds after the animation is done until it registers your clicks. Its hard to believe that they didn't find this frustrating during play testing.