Look, I might justify this month’s Actuality Bytes in any variety of methods. I might say the VR launch cabinet is slightly naked in the meanwhile, with Steam’s New Releases checklist providing up a number of dour navy shooters, doubtful Early Entry initiatives, and fantasy dismemberment porn. I might say that The Room VR: A Darkish Matter has simply acquired a PSVR2 launch, so now appears an opportune second to revisit this acclaimed spin-off puzzler. I might say that The Room VR is the one entry within the collection RPS hasn’t lined but. However to be completely trustworthy, I simply fancied taking part in The Room VR. So there.
Oh all proper, there was a barely extra particular cause why I needed to revisit a sport that got here out simply three days after Half-Life: Alyx. Upon its launch, there wasn’t a lot else like The Room on VR units, a devoted puzzler with excessive manufacturing values that did not really feel the necessity to throw in a gun to shoot or a melon to cut. Now, there are bunch of unbelievable VR brain-ticklers swimming within the pond, such because the time-travelling epic Wanderer, the perspective-bending A Fisherman’s Story collection, and the ingenious automation extravaganza The Final Clockwinder.
Therefore I used to be curious to understand how A Darkish Matter squared up towards these newer and arguably extra creative titles. Fireproof actually know tips on how to make a pacey, intriguing puzzle sport, and their VR spin on the system provides a couple of enjoyable tips of its personal. That mentioned, as a VR expertise there are some irksome design decisions that betray the studio’s unfamiliarity with the tech.
Happening in 1908, The Room VR sees you play a police officer looking for an archaeology professor who has gone lacking within the British Museum. Contacted by a stranger calling themselves The Craftsman, you are whisked out of your police station into a number of puzzling situations, every of which takes place in a unique, lavishly designed location. The primary of those happens the place your lacking professor disappeared, an Historic Egyptian exhibit on the British Museum. Right here, you have to unlock an array of elaborate thriller bins, all to crack open a forbidding sarcophagus within the centre of the room.
![A circle of forbidding stone statues in The Room VR](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/The-room-vr-4.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
VR video games take various approaches in how they allow you to discover environments, however the Room VR is especially distinctive. It employs a teleport-based motion system, however you possibly can solely teleport to designated factors in every space. This derives from, the place viewpoints are additionally preset, seemingly for technical causes partially, but additionally to assist information you thru every puzzle. In VR, nevertheless, the shortcoming to maneuver round freely is far more limiting, particularly given how lovingly detailed the sport’s 3D environments are.
After all, motion is not the primary attraction of The Room VR. That might be getting arms on with all of its devious contraptions. On this, A Darkish Matter does a unbelievable job. It is all gears and cranks and buttons and switches and levers and dials and pulleys and knobs and handles and oddly-shaped keys, with each pulled, pushed, turned or twisted gizmo revealing one other layer of its magnificently designed puzzle bins. I’ll say, although, that the sport would profit from stronger “grip” suggestions, as typically it is not intuitive, and you may usually have to take a look at your digital arms to make sure they’re in the proper spot to seize an object.
On prime of this tactile tinkering are a few broader mechanical concepts. The sport acknowledges the cumbersome field strapped your face in its personal fiction, furnishing you with a nifty wearable “lens” that permits you to peer past the mortal realm. In its most simple operate, this lens reveals hidden neon writing protecting the partitions. It is a neat trick, however I discovered myself distracted by the inelegance with which this imaginative and prescient mode is applied. To activate the lens, you must open up the stock, after which manually pull a lever on the stock menu. Worse, the lens mechanically switches off each time you progress via the world, which implies you are always having to reopen your stock to change it again on.
![Some Ancient Egyptian themed puzzle boxes in The Room VR](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/The-room-vr-1.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
At first, the idea would not actually appear definitely worth the fuss. Fortuitously, it turns into extra concerned as the sport progresses. You may shortly improve your lens to allow you to see via particular surfaces, enabling you to achieve into the heart of sure units to entry hidden puzzles. When you attain the sport’s center act, it upgrades once more to allow you to bodily enter the puzzles, crawling inside units and wandering round their seemingly huge mechanisms. This dramatic shift in scale is the sort of factor VR does rather well, and whereas the affect of it in A Darkish Matter is barely lessened by a fade-to-black between areas, it stays spectacular.
The most effective a part of The Room VR, nevertheless, can be probably the most incongruous. After visiting two pretty grounded places, A Darkish Matter fully jumps the broomstick, transporting you to a fairytale witch’s hut full with effervescent cauldron and crystal ball. Right here, you remedy puzzles by brewing potions, gathering elements and tossing them into the cauldron in alternate for gadgets that unlock new areas within the hut.
![Playing a musical puzzle piano in The Room VR](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/The-room-vr-2.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
It’s extremely foolish, but additionally enormously enjoyable, an actual “let your hair down” second though the tone stays critical. The entire sequence operates on a unique logical plain, swapping out hieroglyphs and clockwork contraptions for arcane symbols and phases of the moon. It additionally contains probably one of the best key ever designed for a online game. I might fortunately play a full sport of this. Overlook The Room, Crone Simulator is the place it is at.
That is a joke, clearly. Fireproof Video games shouldn’t, underneath any circumstances, overlook The Room. The 4 flatscreen entries within the collection are among the many greatest puzzlers ever made, and A Darkish Matter holds its personal in creativity and goldilocks-zone problem. Is it nonetheless one of the best VR puzzler round? Possibly not, and it stays pretty costly virtually three years on since launch. However it’s a ton of enjoyable, and never the worst place to begin in the event you’re fully new to VR.