Rooms: The Main Building Hands-On
Chaperoned by a talking book, we try to find our way out of the strange world of gliding rooms.
At some point in our childhood we must have all fiddled around with plastic sliding puzzles--the kind with one empty space so you could maneuver the little tiles around and rearrange them in numerical order or to complete a picture. Rooms: The Main Building is quite a few steps above that. Not only do you slide tiles around a grid, but each slide is a part of a room, with ladders, telephones, and other objects that can be interacted with as you try to find the way out. Originally a flash game, Rooms works well on the Nintendo Wii, where all you need to do is use the remote to point and click. For information on the DS version, you can read our previous preview on the game here.
The Wii version of Rooms is similar to the DS version in terms of the story setup and gameplay. In the story mode, you play as a young gentleman who receives a puzzle as a birthday gift from someone called Mr. Book. The golden puzzle immediately sucks him into this bizarre world with snoring treasure chests and sliding rooms. You are guided by a talking encyclopedia, and the only way out of this crazy place is to find the exit in the 100-plus rooms that you'll explore. You're given a map of a mansion with 20 rooms to solve. A path connects each door, so as you make your way to the end, another mansion will become available with an additional 20 brain-teasing rooms.
Initially the game isn't very tough, because we managed to get through the first 25 or so rooms without getting stumped. Thankfully, you don't have to complete the picture, and you're given more than one space to slide the panels around. There is a "Show BG" button that will let you know when a tile is in the right place in terms of completing the picture. The game does a good job of introducing you to the different mechanics that you'll run into. For example, clicking on the bright red telephones can teleport you from one room to another, allowing you to hop around the tiles, and walking through the golden armoire switches the tiles while you're standing in it. Your character must be in the room for you to be able to move the tiles. Ladders will let you scale into the room above or below, and you can freely walk from one tile to the next as long as there are no obstacles in your way. Eventually you'll unlock the subway, which lets you hop on a train to travel horizontally on the screen, essentially teleporting you from one side to the other, as long as the two subway signs are along the same line. Sometimes you'll have to light a crate of explosives to blast your way to the other side, but the goal is always the same--get to that exit.
You'll pick up items such as a hammer or leftovers as you solve the rooms. These items let you hunt down golden puzzle pieces to unlock more stuff. If you're wondering what the purpose is behind a hammer and leftovers, we used the hammer to wake up a sleeping chest and then fed it so that it would burp and spit out a puzzle piece. It makes sense! We were initially told that the Wii version would not have a level editor, but in our preview build there was a mode that lets you create your own puzzles using the items that you've uncovered during the story mode. There's also the option to play against an opponent to see who can get to the exit door first.
Rooms: The Main Building is set in a charming 1930s alternate universe with bright red phone booths and classic cars. It's a pleasant yet whimsical setting, with minimal sounds and music but enough that you'll appreciate the audio cues that you do hear. The puzzles are fun yet challenging, and it's the kind of game that you might want to play on a lazy afternoon. Look for Rooms: The Main Building when it is released on March 23.
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