Saturday Morning Gaming: Puzzle Boxes

You’ve seen the absolutely gorgeous and complex and insane puzzlebox videos on youtube, right?

Here’s one of the best:

You’re stuck saying “That’s gorgeous!” and boggling at the intricate puzzles (the thing where you unlock a drawer by removing the drawer beneath it, flipping the bottom drawer, and reinserting it? THAT’S NUTS!) and, at the end, saying “wait… all that to open a dinky drawer that holds something the size of a silver dollar?”

Well… yeah.

Here’s another fun puzzle box video (somewhat more annoying due to the guy yelling at the camera the entire time). Jump to 2:25 if you want to avoid the prelude and get right into working on opening the box:

If you watch that and think “Man… I’d love to do one of those but… I don’t want to spend $10,000…”, I have good news.

Steam has The Room.

Now, when I first looked at the room, I assumed that it was a horror game. It’s not! Now, it is *ATMOSPHERIC*. You may be excused for feeling creepy while playing it… but it’s the creepy of when you’re in the house alone. It’s not the creepy of when you think you’re in the house alone but you’re not.

The story is bare bones. You get left a puzzle box. Now you get to open it.

Here, check it out:

Use the mouse to spin yourself around the box. The hint says to look at the top so let’s go up there…

And let’s check out the envelope…

There’s a note and a key! Oooh, let’s take the key and read the note and check out the box next to the envelope…

And use the key on the lock and…

An eyepiece and a cryptic note!

Now, I won’t get into spoilers for any of the puzzles beyond what I’ve shown so far but the game plays like in the youtubes up there. Spin around the box. Poke and prod. There’s a handful of little riddles like “Feed me and I shall survive. Give me drink and I shall die.” These little riddles offer hints as to what needs to be poked and prodded next. Stuck? Check that eyepiece and look at the puzzle box through that. Maybe you’ll get hints as to what else you could be doing.

Oh, I guess I can give *ONE* (minor) spoiler. You know what’s in the box of the tutorial?

A second puzzle box.

Better get crackin’.

(Wanna know what’s in *THAT* puzzle box?)

Another one.

So if you want to experience the joys of goofing around with a fabulously expensive and intricate puzzle box without, you know, spending an arm and a leg?

Get The Room. It’s normally $5. It’s on sale this weekend for $1.24.

If you like puzzles, that’s an absolute *STEAL*. (And you can get the collection of all four Room games for just a hair over $10.)

So… what are you playing?