The mobile game platform is one that has an increasing range of game genres available to it, but one of the staples of the platform is the puzzle genre. Tiny Room Stories: Mystery Town is an entry on the long list of puzzle games, and it is a relatively unique interpretation of the escape room concept. How does it hold up in the grand scheme of things?
In a Nutshell
Overall Feeling: It's worth money!
Pros:
- Excellent storytelling
- Very intuitive controls
- Most puzzles have a discernible logic to them
Cons:
- Only the first chapter is free
- Low replayability
Story and Writing
Let's start with the story. The game is set in a small town called Redcliff, and you play as a private detective that visits the town at the request of your father. On arriving though, you find that the entire town is empty. It's up to you to solve the mystery, and perhaps save the town's inhabitants from disappearing for good.
The game's underlying concept in the story is very well thought out, and lends itself really well to the mechanics of the game. As you go along, you find clues that help you, as a viewer, piece together what is happening in the small town. Information is trickled down to your character at a solid pace, and I couldn't be happier with how the writers planned it out.
Sound and Aesthetics
The sound of the game is minimal, but they are there. Music isn't prevalent in the game, with only few rooms giving you the option to play music via radios that you can interact with. Sound effects all make sense, although they do sound very stereotypical. Stone grinding, for example, sounds like a stock sound that you can find in most games. That said, there is nothing really negative to say about the sound.
I absolutely love the aesthetics in the game. There are no people to animate, and although everything in the environment is rendered in simplistic 3D polygons, they still somehow manage to look quaint. Almost everything can be a potential clue, so many things have animations to them. All of the animations are very smooth, even on my lower-end phone.
The environment textures are similar in effect. They are simpler textures, but they do fit the overall aesthetic. Weather animations exist and don't get in the way of anything, and they somehow did well animating steam and water.
Gameplay and Mechanics Tiny Room Stories is really simple to play. Most of the gameplay involves tapping on objects. It's a point-and-click adventure, but on your phone. The key difference in the game is one key feature: rotating the view.
The environments you are placed in at rotatable 360 degrees, at 90 degree portions. Certain puzzles make use of this capability, and key features on each level are hidden this way. Thankfully, your character will remind you to turn the room if you forget.
There is an inventory system as well. To keep things straightforward, they are only in your inventory for as long as they are useful. Once the puzzle that requires those items is solved, the items will be automatically removed to save space.
There is a zoom in feature as well, but it was never really explained. This is done by pinching the screen together, and can be helpful if you really want to look through everything with a fine-toothed comb. For the most part though, this feature isn't vital to your solutions.
In terms of content, the puzzles of this game, at least for me, hit the sweet spot in terms of difficulty. It's not difficult enough to be frustrating and not easy enough to make players play on auto-pilot. The first season, the free one, has puzzles that make the most sense. Season two almost has equal quality, but their puzzles are more involved, so some of the logic behind the solutions is a touch disappointing. They made some reaches in their connections that are sensible as a solution, but are nonsensical in execution.
Unfortunately, the downfall of the escape puzzle genre is that there isn't much replayability. Solutions don't randomize, which provides that game with a logic that you can follow, but that means that playing the game again would yield the same experience. There isn't much that can be done about this pitfall, but it doesn't detract at all from the overall game.
Final Thoughts
Tiny Room Stories: Mystery Town is definitely a title that is worth trying out, even if the game doesn't have that much in the way of replayability. As of writing this in February of 2020, the game is still being updated, and more puzzles can be unlocked by paying for them in the form of a new season. I would say that it's worth the money.
If you're looking for a good way to exercise your logic and problem-solving skills, this title is definitely recommended. Thanks for reading!