We’re all agreed that Escape The Room games are great, now that the dissenters have been killed. Sagrario’s Room is one of the finest I’ve played, and you should too. It’s also one of the toughest, but helpfully, the most rewarding. A very barren room sports a plastic chair, screwed to the floor and blocking the handle-less door, and a briefcase on the floor against the opposite wall. Some panels on the wall hide further secrets, with many more hidden details concealed throughout. The challenge, as ever, is to escape the room.
It’s not flawless. In fact, it falls into the most common trap of ETRs – finding the pixel. There’s a couple of angles it’s hard to find, and at the start there are a few too many found objects that don’t let you progress any further. The number of times I thought, “Ooh, okay, so now what can I do with this?” to find out it was nothing until I’d done a bunch more, were too often near the start. However, once you’ve all the items and locations spotted, solving the puzzles is often exquisite. I’m not too proud to deny using the walkthrough to find a couple of bits of hidden stuff I’d not spotted, and to get the radio open. But I’m equally bubbling with pride that I solved the three key puzzles with my own damned brain. One is especially convoluted and satisfying to have pieced together.
Really smart stuff, is slightly too obscure in places. Found via IndieGames. Please to enjoy
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I hate Escape the Room games for the exact reason you probably love them, but my brain is not very good at puzzles so I guess that could be it…
I tried this earlier today, actually. The problem I have with these games (and adventure games for that matter) is that once I turn to a walkthrough, I find it impossible to put it away, and just end up following it through.
It’s not that I’m bad at puzzle solving – just different forms of puzzles. Moreover, I’m impatient. At least when it comes to games I’m gonna play in tea breaks…
I have enough trouble getting out of my own room :(
And yet, as always, I will not be able to put this down until I have solved it. Without a walkthrough, because I’m a masochist.
I have five items. One was a clue. One seems to hold a clue I can’t get to. One interacts with a certain part of the scenery, but is clearly only half the solution to a puzzle I need another item for. The other two items seem useless at the moment.
The only other things the game will let me interact with are the panel puzzles. Unless there is some obscure mathematical law connecting the numbers six and seven with the nudie man picture that flashes up in those montages of alien civilizations learning the sum of human history, I do not think that the game offers enough information to the player to find a solution.
So I guess my question is, ‘when do I start having fun’?
BEAT IT. I AM KING OF OPENING DOORS.
BooleanBob – bottom left of the nudie man pic. Also, I’m not sure Leonardo would appreciate that.
For some strange reason, I hate sound puzzles. They’re a huge turn off, the worst offender being Dreamfall, but the radio in this was aggravating enough for me to not want to play anymore. Is it just me being mad, or does straining your ear to distinguish between different tones of bleeps and bloops bug many other people?
No? I’d be honoured to contribute to an alien’s understanding of my civilization, even if said event was only in some fellow fleshbag’s fiction. I’d take greater issue with my picture being snagged to pretty up a frustrating pixel-hunter…
Anyway. I got to the safe, got the laser thingy working, and lost count trying to do 51 clicks to the left. I’ll keep the tab open, but I’m pretty sure it’s bested me.
Boolean: the code for the safe isn’t telling you the number of times you need to click the safe, just the number you need to land on.
Anyway, so I actually broke the game playing it the second time around. The code for the last panel involved me having to click two of the same squares twice, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t meant to happen. So yeah, it’s impossible for me to complete it. The downside of randomising the codes I guess.
Christ almighty – that took some work even with the walkthrough :D
I can’t get the lock to open either. For instance, my code is 52R21L52R8L. I go right to land on 52, left to 21, right to 52 again, left to 8. And nothing. What am I doing wrong?
@Pags: you beat the game in 35 minutes without using a walkthrough?
DarkNoghri: try turning the lock the opposite way to how you were turning it before.
Mil: YES. I’m as surprised as you are.
@DarkNoghri: “going right” in this case should mean clicking on the right side of the wheel, i.e. turning the wheel counter-clockwise.
Actually maybe not 35 minutes. I was about ten minutes in when I made my first post.
…… but that’s turning it left…..
@Pags: your feat reminds me of a joke. An old man goes to the doctor and says: “Doctor, I’m a bit worried, because I’m 70 and I have sex ten times a day. Is that good or bad?” The doctor replies: “My dear friend, that is neither good nor bad, that is a DIRTY LIE”.
Just kidding ;-). Congratulations on your puzzle-solving fu, sir.
@Pags: Oh, you had to clarify while was slowly typing my post. Damn.
Alright that left panel has me stumped. I gave in and checked the walkthrough, and … I still don’t get it. *spoilers ho* The briefcase only matches 4 colors with letters (notes), where do I get the other 3? The walkthrough says “Match the colors with the letters it gave you on the panel and it should give you the key”, what letters or colors is it talking about? Aaaargh…
Pixel hunting is fine by me. But mix that with interactive inventory objects and it can get tiresome. This was starting to feel a little too Roberta Williams at certain points. It could have escaped that with some aural or visual cues on some objects to identify intrinsic qualities about them (for the less experienced).
On that note, contradicting cues are a sin in inventory based games. I wish I could explain what it was that irked me, but spoilers are a bigger sin.
Finished it. With help and walkthroughs. I blame the fact that I’ve only ever done one of these before.
*spoilers*Pace, you only need 4. If you shine the blacklight over the panel, it makes piano keys. If you play piano, it should be obvious which key is which. Or just google it or something.
Aaaaaaaaaargh. Yes I understand how piano keys work. What I just realized is that the other 3 have to be on no color. I had the 4 set properly, it just didn’t work until I cleared the other 3. Gaaah that’s irritating. Err, otherwise great game so far..
I absolutely love these kinds of games, I managed to complete this without a walkthrough.
John Walker loves to click screen
*Spoiling pixel-hunt*
I actually hated the game for having me find a key behind a pre-rendered suitcase in a pre-rendered photo by clicking an extremely narrow zone between clicking away from the scene, clicking on the suitcase itself, or clicking on an obnoxious banner for Sears’ “NEW ITEMS ADDED DAILY !!1″
I mistakenly clicked on banners as much as three times – that’s how much random clicking this game invite.
And that supposedly “loose” floor pane… Are you kidding me? John Walker is a mouse-clicking equivalent to Sisyphus.
Can’t even beat it with a walkthrough. I have no clue wtf it wants me to do with the gold bar =<
Yeah, I did end up clicking on the ads more than once. Thank God the game had a ‘continue’ option.
Thank god for AdBlock Plus.
Done.
Interesting but just too convoluted. I remember liking adventure games too. If they were to go like this then I won’t miss their passing. Its not that this isn’t good – it is – its that its too time consuming in a “lets see if random thing X works” or “I’m going to have to think like an X-files fan” way.
Could you add a “needs sound enabled” text to the article, JW? Maybe that would save people other than me from playing through half the thing and then not be able to continue.
It was fun up until then, though. Except what you and others said about finding the angles. I needed the walkthrough to find the first key just because of that.
Pags you’re a big fat stinking liar.
There is no way you could figure out the obscured code for the invisible thing above the thing.
I suppose you also took piano lessons to decode the invisible thing on top of the other thing?
Who do you think you are Russel Crowe?
Invisible thing above the thing?
Once I got that blacklight, I shone it on every damned thing I could.
Same here. I haven’t made it out yet, either.
I GOT IT!!! WOOO!!!! Yes there was a walkthrough involved. Anyone who did it on their own and isn’t lying, I take my hat off to that fellow.
And I apologize for the double post.
I love reading the comments on these games because they always refer to items I can’t find. I beat this relying entirely on the walkthrough as usual.
Yeah, I know. I swore I was almost there with colors and letters corresponding to the sides of a die, and then I see “blacklight” and “piano keys” and think oh, to hell with this then.
That game was hard but apreciated. I admit That I used the walkthrough for the last key. I guess I would’ve figure it out, but I did not have 3 hours to spend on that (and no patience either)
I think MS Paint Adventures (http://www.mspaintadventures.com) is the finest Escape the Room adventure (or Roomisode, if you must).
Wait, that black thing was actually a keyhole? Umpf. These things make me feel stupid.
I gave up. Leaning too much on the guide because I suck at these games.
Reading this thread makes me feel like Mr Brains, for beating the game without a walkthrough and not to much random clicking (but damn the fucking behind-suitcase-angle).
Nice feeling.
Sigh. This fails as funtimes over and over. My criteria for a puzzle-solving game goes like this: I encounter a problem, I think about how to solve it, I test a few hypotheses, and eventually get it right.
What this does is have me picking up things without knowing why, doing things to other things without knowing why, and very often clicking on ads when I’m searching for that little sliver of screen that lets me look behind a thing.
Plus, invisible panels? Why the hell should I feel proud for finding something invisible?
Well JOHN WALKER, my experience was exactly like you said in the post, I needed a walkthrough-headstart to find some nooks and crannies, but as soon as the puzzles came I didn’t need it anymore and had some sweet payoff.
Especially loved the second panel, I thought it was a very clever idea (and the thought that me solving it implies that I am very clever, too, which is nice.)
I generally adore games that have me looking on a scrap of paper full of mad looking notes and scribblings next to my keyboard when i’m done.
Thanks for the tip JOHN WALKER
edit: just remembered that I thought the interface of the thing was terribly uncomfortable and managed to piss me off way more than invisible panels.
I absolutely love the puzzly bits, but the search-for-clues-and-stuff bits are hampered by an unweildly interface that makes me want to gnaw at my fingers in frustration.
I’d really love to see these games take a more interactive approach along the lines of the Penumbra games. The clever chaps at Frictional captured much of the thinking and atmosphere behind your average Escape the Room affair, but wrapped it in a familiar, intuitive FPS-style interface. Then, the only puzzles you had to solve would be the intentional ones, rather than those presented by a cryptic interface.
Pags I meant that light heartedly.
bloody liar.
Great game! I played all the way through in on go for about 1 hour. To bad it all ended so soon…
Didn’t really like this and I usually love adventure games. Too much of the difficulty involved either spotting things that were ridiculously hard to spot or doing things that made no sense whatsoever until after you did them. Neither of those really constitute a puzzle to me, they are both just exercises in patience.