Coming Late to Escape the Room Games

My misadventures in puzzle box gaming have lead me, perhaps inevitably, to the little niche world of point-and-click "escape the room" (ETR) games. They ticked all of my requirements for an enjoyable gaming experience - no time limits, puzzle based, casual gameplay, and low levels of commitment. Plus, there are plenty that have bright, stylized graphics and don't subscribe to the current trend of horror theming. It's been a lot of fun getting addicted to these over the past few weeks. Alas, I think I've come to the genre too late, as most of the best ETR games are from several years ago, and technological advances seem to be leaving them behind.

ETR games are built more or less like puzzle box games. You're stuck in a room and have to hunt for clues and objects by clicking around on elements of the room, then solve puzzles to make your escape. Mostly this involves getting codes to open locks, and occasionally gathering and combining objects. The mechanics are the same as the old point and click adventure games like "Myst," with an inventory and an emphasis on exploration, but usually ETR games are more limited. The basic ones give you the four walls of a single room to scour for clues and interact with. The more complicated ones involve multiple linked rooms. I've found ones where you need to escape from a dollhouse, a sinking car, or even play a cat trying to escape a pet carrier.

I've found myself gravitating to certain creators, mostly Japanese. Robamimi and Neutral Games are my favorites at the moment because of the ease of the gameplay and the pleasant graphics in their games. Robamimi's games mostly take place in domestic settings, and are great for relaxing with. Neutral Games has a series of Christmas themed games that are just adorable. There are some highly touted older ETR games like "The Crimson Room" and "Sagrario's Room" that I gave up on because the gameplay mechanics were too clunky and difficult. Occasionally enterprising game designers will also incorporate other kinds of games into the ETR game - having you beat a minigame to move on to the next puzzle, for instance. I'm not a fan of this, because it defeats the whole purpose of my playing an ETR game to begin with.

There's a certain rhythm to ETR games that you pick up on after playing for a while, which is very appealing. I like having a walkthrough or hint system available to avoid unnecessary frustration, because I usually get stymied by elements that have nothing to do with the puzzle solving, like objects being a little too well hidden (who hides batteries inside a screwdriver?) or the game wanting me to do something counterintuitive (use the telephone to smash a hole in the wall). I'm pretty good when it comes to ciphers or pattern recognition, but not great. For instance, I was smart enough to realize that the clue "EXILES" was actually a string of numbers upside down. I was not smart enough to realize it was actually the equation 5371 x 3, that I needed to solve to get the actual code I needed. I've heard some promising things about VR escape room games, but haven't had a chance to try them myself yet.

The point and click ETR games inspired the real world escape room games that have become so popular over the last few years. However, they don't seem to have translated so well to other platforms. I've been pretty underwhelmed by the mobile ETR games I've tried so far, probably because most of them have much more cluttered, grungier aesthetics. There seems to be a lot of influence from more typical adventure games and "find the object" games, and not for the better. Others seem to be trying to push more realistic graphics to simulate playing a real world escape room game, which I'm not interested in.

There are plenty of the old school, browser based ETR games around online, and I'm still happily working my way through several creators' back catalogues. However, as with everything online more than a few years old, they're being threatened by obsolescence. The biggest issue is that Adobe Flash, which most of the older ETR games were designed to run on, is becoming extinct. My Chrome browser recently started displaying warnings that Flash would no longer be supported after December 2020.

Sigh.
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