Escape from the Small Bar is not Tesshi-e's most difficult, almost a Tesshi-e light, but a charming little escape that will leave a smile on your face. A game as compact and fun as the narrow little space it inhabits, a pleasure for those who enjoy solving their way through locked doors and yes, there is, as always, a happy coin escape. Time to go bar hopping! Just remember, you do need to leave eventually.
There's something unsettling about these stark, washed out sterile backgrounds, very typical of the whole series. Yet the look only adds to the sense of mystery as the player works their way closer and closer to the denouement, whatever that may be in the end. Brace yourself for some strangeness, and join the journey to the center of the house, the solar system, or the human soul. You decide.
Hotel Bianco-Bianco continues the tradition of quality design inherent in Bianco-Bianco's escapes. The eerily empty lobby aside, this looks like an upscale establishment, one you might not mind spending a night in. What follows is not the most difficult escape out there, but one that is clever, logical, and has a nice twist on the old theme of two endings.
Mild Escape 3 is really basic stuff. No cutesy theme or notes, no back story, literally just you and a locked room. Poke into every corner, open every drawer and cabinet, and maybe take time for a little break to help you figure your way out. What else can you say? This is room escaping 101.
A remarkably fun and inventive puzzle game series we won't ever get tired of seeing new installments of, Hoshi Saga returns to give us more opportunities to find the hidden star in each of the 25 brand new levels. Yoshio Ishii of Nekogames has created more full-color artwork for Hoshi Saga Ringoame, the latest iteration of the popular and revered series. Why are you still reading this? Go play!
Despite the lack of English, this is perhaps the most accessible of Tesshi-e's games. No color puzzles to confound the colorblind, and no construction to infuriate the mechanically inept. Just smooth music, a very Zen space, and lots of escaping logic to serve your casual gameplay needs. Get ready for a relaxing trip, complete with a nice hot soak waiting at the end.
Despite the minor flaws, Alloy is an enjoyable escape featuring a protagonist under the witness protection program who just wants some time away from his robot guardians. The puzzles flow together logically, and the construction bit is just terribly amusing. Take some time, and enjoy the logic of the game and the illogic of the premise. So help the poor guy escape! Just, you know, watch out for the flying robot guards.
Sometimes, when you're having a bad case of the mid-week blahs, whimsy is a good thing. Exit Not Found is not a very tough room escape title, but something fun and involving that will bring a smile to your face as you search for that elusive exit. It's an amusing way to kill 5 or 10 minutes, something to take your mind off of schoolwork, lousy weather, or whatever mind-numbing task is occupying you this week.
Dismantlement: Alarm Clock is here and it's dismantling time again! It's always a joy when a new dismantlement game comes out, and Dismantlement: Alarm Clock is one of those great ways to kill a few minutes. Have fun dismantling that annoying clock! Just try not to blow up.
Escape from the Tatami Room is not the toughest escape out there, but one that hangs together nicely with a mix of use of found objects, construction, and pure logic. Amusing casual gameplay that doesn't take a lot of time but leaves you feeling very satisfied, even if you don't really get to eat that excellent spread that is the final reward. Feeling peckish? Then get moving!
Mou haru desu ka? Yes, the Japanese are asking "Is it spring yet?" too. A sure sign of spring is the release of a new PonPon House escape game from Orange Biscuit. And now PonPon House 3 is here! The Komorebi house is awash in pastels and cute details, and the relaxing music and birdsong of the soundtrack will bring spring to you, even if the weather where you are isn't cooperating (just yet). Haru desu~~~~~!
Dad is a sentimental journey through a room that you're not even trying to escape at all. It's not a long game, nor is it terribly difficult, but it is one of those gems that really hangs together well. A gentle, easy, sentimental mid-week break. Slow down, relax, let the soothing piano tune lull you into a serene place, and logic your way through the search for answers. Just remember, it's not easy being a Dad.
58 Works room escapes are casual gameplay done right. Fun, distracting, logical, and quirky, this is the perfect mid-week escape. Put on your thinking caps and start escaping! And when you find your way out, definitely stick around for the closing credits with the friendly robot.
With a nice mix of math, logic, color, and construction, Escape from 5th Door is fun, balanced room escaping that challenges and teases and taunts and eventually leaves you happy to escape. Be prepared for some odd leaps of logic, and laugh at the "bad" escape when you find it. Just get escaping!
Tesshi-e has graced us with a lovely, classic room escape scenario. With four different escape scenarios to find, Escape From the Snowman's Room will happily engage your logic circuits and transport you to a place where snowmen get really angry if you break their toys in the process of escape. Bundle up, and be prepared to Escape From the Snowman's Room.
Short, sweet, and sentimental, Matiawase is still an entertaining little escape from the everyday. Perfect for playing during a short break or using as an excuse to take a short break, something that will transport you away from reality for a few short minutes, a perfect cure for the mid-week and mid-winter blahs.
Challenging, fun, mysterious, the puzzles flow from one to another in a beautiful logical procession in this latest escape title from Place of Light that sees you trying to shine a little light on a darkened room. Most of the enjoyment is in that wonderful feeling and happy sigh as you unveil one more tiny point of light, pointing to yet another puzzle and another point of light. Well worth the trip.
It is almost impossible to describe the joy created by wandering in the strange, surreal universe that Enu (Hanamushi) has created in Flower Insect. The synthesis of art, animation, game, and experience is nearly flawless, and will leave the casual gamer breathless as they wander deeper and deeper into the morass. Stunning beyond all belief, this is not necessarily a game to play all in one go. Rather, the Hanamushi game is something to consume in small bites, lest you find yourself deep in the abyss that is the imagination of an extremely talented individual.
A simple room escape by Tesshi-e that returns to the basic form of escaping from a room, Escape From Bed Room is an entertaining, challenging way to spend 10 or 20 minutes. Although it perhaps lacks the complexity present in some games, there is still a lot of escaping fun to be had. Time to get off the couch, stop watching the tube, and expand your mind a little.
Robamimi rarely disappoints and the New Who Am I? is no exception. A little shorter than usual for Robamimi's work, but nonetheless lots of casual gameplay fun is here to be had. Perfect for a short break, most gamers will find themselves out in ten minutes or less. It's worth playing just for the final puzzle. After all, how many room escape games (spoiler alert!) require you to bribe your way out?
Just when you thought you had seen the last of the Hoshi Saga series, Yoshio Ishii of Nekogames returns, and in full color! Hoshi Saga Ringo is the fourth installment in the Hoshi Saga series, and while it might not be as difficult as its predecessors, Ishii-san brings new life to the game with his beautiful artwork and use of gradients.
Just because it's simple doesn't make Tarutaru's Room any less an enjoyable game to play. The cut scenes definitely slow down gameplay, but really add to the delightful experience. So brace yourself for an overload of cute and enjoy the fun of helping a little Tartar elf escape from Tarutaru's Room!
First Love is an escape-type game, though there is no real escaping to be done. It's a nice combination of Robamimi's sentiment and Bianco-Bianco's quirkiness. This is not a tense nail-biter, nor a pure cold logic puzzle. Instead, it is a warm and fuzzy nostalgia trip that is perfect for a short break from the holiday madness.
Play the role of Santa Claus, trapped in a lovely, warm A-Frame cottage trying to make your way out. It's tempting to just relax in the rocking chair, but there's escaping to be done, so try to avoid the temptation. Wander around the cozy, inviting space and investigate every nook and cranny, there's bound to be a way out. None of the puzzles are terribly tricky, but this is a fun, calm, quiet room escape perfect for the holiday season. What are you waiting for? You have presents to deliver!
Christmas Escape 3 continues the Neutral tradition of fine escapes as you encounter chirping chicks, a mercenary kitty cat, and oh, yeah, how good are you at ice fishing? The whole thing hangs together beautifully and the ending is, well, as cute as a button. It's the perfect present to escape fans for the holiday season.
Despite all the silliness, there's lots of real escaping fun to be had in A Code Escape from Japan. A nice mix of puzzle solving and use of found objects; with the need for the animals' own special abilities thrown in for good measure makes for wonderful gaming experience. There are even two endings to be found in this little gem. Marvel at the leaping dog and the punching cat, just remember to use them well while you are playing nurse.
Beard of Santa is the perfect mid-week pick-me-up, especially at this time of year. Fire up this little gem and learn what you've always suspected: cats are good gymnasts, raccoons are helpful gardeners, composting is good for the environment, and Santa really does suck sometimes, doesn't he?
Welcome to The Water Well by no1game.net, a quiet room escape game that won't solve all your problems, but is certainly an oasis of calm in an otherwise frantic week.
Escape From Mr. Y's Room is a relaxing way to stretch your brain in the middle of the week without overheating. Let the bare walls and lilting piano music take you to a very Zen place as you try to escape. Settle into a lotus position, take a deep breath, let it out, and enjoy the Zen of casual gameplay.
Although dark, brooding, atmospheric, scary, or slam-your-head-against-the-desk hard room escapes are always fun, in the middle of the week it's nice to kick back and enjoy something simpler. A nice break from the everyday that won't take up the entire day (or even the entire break, if you're really quick). So sit back, relax, and enjoy a cappuccino of an escape game. With colorful sprinkles!
Occasionally it's nice just to sit back, relax, and fire up the little gray cells to solve a series of puzzles rather than fry them from constant adrenaline. Escape from the Pumpkin Room is not the most original or taxing room escape game, but it's a wonderful cure for the mid-week blahs. A nice combination of logic puzzle solving and use of found objects guarantees that you will enjoy stretching the neurons a little without ending up slamming your head on the desk in frustration.
This time around I scavenged up a pair of small but entertaining room escape packages from a Japanese developer called No1Game. The first, Emergency Exit Sign, tells the story of a Japanese all-night worker who just about lives at his office, which becomes a problem when a monster traps him inside. The second, Game In Game In Game, shows us a rather obsessed escape fanatic who plays a room escape game every day before bed, only to wake up one morning trapped in one.
While not a complicated life-or-death struggle to escape, Escape from the Meeting Room is perfect for mid-week casual gameplay. Short enough to fit in a lunch break (or even a coffee break), escape from responsibility, escape from the everyday, and most importantly Escape from the Meeting Room!
Sometimes it's nice to kick back, relax, and enjoy the scenery and the truly casual gameplay of a room escape. The puzzles themselves are tricky without being difficult, adding to the relaxation factor. While there is only one way out, there are three different endings based on your methodology. Having trouble getting over the mid-week hump? Then sit down, relax, pour a drink, and spend a little time escaping the Strawberry Cafe.
Although most experienced gamers could blow through this in 10 minutes or less, slow down, take your time. Enjoy the headache-inducing clash of carpeting and wall patterns, contemplate the meaning of the displays, or just gaze at the monkey head and wonder, is that post modern or post-post-modern? Dali or Dada? Stay in the game too long and you will half expect dripping clocks to appear across a landscape. Perfect for casual gameplay, Escape from Blender Art Gallery is a fun break from whatever you are doing. Just remember afterwords, it was only a dream.
Magical Sphere Escape evokes that Myst-like sensation of not just solving puzzles, but solving history. And despite its flaws, Magical Sphere Escape is one of the best escape games I have played. There are a couple places where you'll need your Veteran Escaper Sense™ to find a clue or item, but the major puzzles are astonishingly logical. But be sure to read our review and consult our translation notes to get the most out of hidden gem.
U-Sensor is a fun, engaging escape game from Japanese development studio, HILG (G-Sensor). Short enough for casual gameplay yet complex enough (three different ways out) to have fun playing more than once. Escape the doldrums of office work by escaping from the office!
GUMP has done it again! The boy with the pink hair is back! Uranus picks up where Neptune left off, in that same mysterious ivy-lined passage, only to trap you in yet another strange room you must escape. But not alone! Prepare to meet a most... unusual companion. Uranus is not terribly taxing but still an enjoyable weekday escape.
The Metalix have hidden their power source deep within their lair, and it's up to you to seize it! If only you weren't so... naked. Dungeon crawl the night away in this addictive roguelike from Point Zero as you search for gold, items, weapons, and, yes, clothes on your way to stop the Metalix. With randomly generated treasure and dungeons, steel daddy-long-legs, giant eggs and killer babies, you're in for a long trip.
It's not often that you'll find yourself attempting to escape from an industrial hole in the ground. Unless you went in after your model airplane, and now the ladder is too slippery to let you back up, that is. Welcome to Tesshi-e's Escape from the Underground Space, a fun way to spend a coffee break, or just to take 10-15 minutes away from whatever you're doing.
Solitude begins with a brief animation of a plane, one wing trailing smoke, plummeting from the sky into the ocean. A young man pulls himself out of the water and collapses onto a beach, exhausted. Playing as the sole survivor of the accident, can you solve puzzles, collect objects and unlock the secrets of this mysterious island and escape?
A previous project from FonGeBooN, Purism follows the same formula we're used to: you're stuck in a room, and you have to solve all manner of puzzles to get out of it. Some noticeable features of this particular room include some unusual panels in the walls, a door with no handle, a small chest of drawers, some metallic shelves, and a sculpture with many red, blue, and yellow balls. All of these will be instrumental in your ultimate departure.
Loom Custody is the latest escape game from Place of Light. In it you wake to find yourself ensconced in a grimy, nearly-bare cell. The blue sky glimpsed through a high window grate is the sole spot of cheer in your bleak prison; with a bit of exploration, however, you will find that the room is far more intriguing and complex than it first appears. To have any chance of escape, you must discover clues, solve puzzles and use all of the limited resources at your disposal.
You are trapped aboard a space station with a frustratingly underfueled space ship in this wonderful, uncomplicated shot of pure escape game goodness, from always excellent Japanese designer 58 Works. Substantive and entertaining yet not too tough, Escapers #05 Space could be the perfect oasis in the middle of your hectic week.
In Koi2, from the creators of Kissma, you play a man with blow-dried hair and a terrible sweater, sitting across from a woman who can best be described as "tolerant". The object of the game, as you both slide up and down on hydraulic lifts, is to poke her in the forehead with your finger as many times as you can in one minute. Yes, this is a game about forehead poking.
Don't let the game's charming trappings deceive you, Waiting Room has real substance and some formidable puzzles. The extent of the efforts needed to complete the game, which includes searching the internet, might turn off some casual gamers; those who persevere, however, will surely be delighted by this quirky and clever escape game confection.
Escape From the Living Room is a solid, entertaining room escape game. Simply point and click your way through an uncluttered yet beautifully rendered living room, packed with challenges. Or you could just kick back on that inviting couch, relax, and watch some DVDs.
In Smile For Me, you are a recently deceased person who, seeing the tears of a grieving loved one, seeks to bring joy to that individual. Give it a try if you feel like you might like a breath of fresh air, a few minutes of unadorned sincerity to cleanse your palate, and a darn good escape game to boot.
Though the original Who Am I? was a good-looking room escape game with some clever puzzles, it suffered from a lack of polish and some illogical puzzles. Robamimi has ameliorated these problems by reformulating (and, in numerous cases, entirely changing) the game's puzzles, cleaning up the interface and adding a save feature as well as a twinkly soundtrack.
While not the magnum opus of the escape game genre, Mystery House in Japan is fun, quick, and indisputably well-designed, perfect for a brief break in your day. While Bianco Bianco may not be the most stunningly original designer out there, it can always be counted upon to provide a solidly constructed and entertaining experience.
A lighter. Some flour. A stick, a rock, a knife and a towel. How, using only these handful of items, can you escape a room? Six different ways, apparently, at least in Room Escape SIX, a new escape-the-room game from Japanese designer Kotaro. You are the latest challenger to enter a strange, hexagon-shaped building that exists solely to be escaped from; how you do so depends upon the way in which you use the room's odd furnishings.
Another brilliant room escape game from Neutral, the authors of the amazing Vision. Lights features inventive tough-but-fair puzzles, gorgeous rendered scenes, and enough charm to drown a dozen rubber duckies.
It's another blast from the past with this week's Weekday Escape. It's an oldie from our friends at Bianco-Bianco by the name of Escape from Dr. Ichie's Factory, another gem in the Dr. Ichie series. The story's a familiar one: you wake up in the middle of an odd factory building, and you find a note from the culprit, Dr. Ichie, telling you that you have to solve some puzzles to escape from it.
Do you like shiny things as much as we do? Metalix TD, besides being a top quality tower defense game, is undoubtedly very, very shiny. Each wave of shiny enemy robots takes a different attack path at random, so it's a good thing that your shiny defense towers can move around. Yeah, it's pretty shiny.
Melon Lacquer. Mellifluous Lymphocytes. Marimba Lion. Just what, exactly, does #07 ML stand for? Anyway, this is another high-quality escape-the-room game from consistently excellent Japanese designer 58 Works, who also made Cottage and Escape from Test Kitchen 2.
Coated in pixelated graphics and pipingly sharp music, Mars Tower Defense, by Japanese developer Taro, will appeal to those with a flair for retro and a penchant for strategy. Defense your mars colony from walking octopi and disembodied bouncing dogs heads!
Toys is a compact, high-quality escape game that, if not exactly groundbreaking, is certainly enjoyable. A prominent feature of one of the game's puzzles is the usage of stereograms, a form of optical illusion in which a three-dimensional image is hidden within a two-dimensional picture. All in all, a high-quality production.
Miracle Witch is the bright, fast, colorful, hard-as-nails story of cute little witch Polfe and her quest to defeat the evil king Yeah Walusa, which is the best name for an evil king ever. Find secret treasures, slay monstrous bosses, solve obscure puzzles. Like a mouse-controlled Legend of Zelda,
Rougoku falls into the category of more "realistic" escape games, those that concentrate in large part upon collecting and using items in practical ways (with, of course, a few genuine puzzles thrown in). It is a solid room escape game from a solid developer, familiar and proven with games like this.
The Great War of Prefectures plays like a cross between Risk and an RTS, with Japan's prefectures (analogous to other countries' states or provinces) serving as the territories you fight over. Despites some interface flaws, this game has that elusive quality that will bring you back for more even after you thought you'd had enough.
Loom Blend is another room escape game from Place of Light, who previously brought us Room Fake, Room Bath, Room Marine, and Loom Above. The game's scenario is nothing new: you are in a room filled with diabolical puzzles and more than a few secrets, and must employ all of your wits to escape. A simple premise, but one that Place of Light does very well.
G-Sensor is a solid, well-plotted and very enjoyable escape-the-room game from Japanese developer HILG. You, as a nameless business-person, have checked into the mysterious Uncle Boo's Hotel, and now you can't get out!
Sentokun in Kamakura is a short 3D action adventure about a monk with antlers on his head, on a quest to defeat a giant, antlered cowboy. At the beginning, the monk is too weak to prevail, so to build up his strength, he must ransack a peaceful coastal town and raze it to the ground. If you liked Katamari Damacy, or you wish there were more browser games that let you throw houses at people, you may enjoy this.
In this single-player Flash implementation of the card game Sevens, you play a stone cactus, locked in an endless death-match with a room full of other stone cacti, hoping to prolong the sweet breath of life for a few more rounds before The Claw hauls you off to the Great Gravel-Maker in the Sky. No, really.
Loom above is the latest room escape game from Place of Light, one of our favorite room escape game developers. It's not nearly as long or challenging as previous releases we've seen by this developer, and there are far fewer items to find. The puzzles are all fairly straightforward and the game is a joy to play because of how well everything fits together. See for yourself.
Zerosum is an intense variation on match-3 puzzles, with strict policies on winning and losing but vast opportunities for strategy. Easy to learn, hard to master. Make matches by adding adjacent numbers together, but make sure you don't run out of digits to replace them! It's brain candy, once you get into it, like defusing a bomb constructed by an six-year-old arch-villain.
With just enough challenge to engage, but not overtax, the mind, The Wedding Anniversary is a perfectly mellow respite from the workday world. A simple piano tune floats through the air. Relax, kick back and indulge in a bit of sentimentality... a wonderful room escape game that's more fun than a chick flick.
Neptune is quite different from GUMP's previous room-escape games. It doesn't begin with an interesting introductory movie in which a pink-haired character does not encounter a huge building and doesn't decide to enter it, not passing an enigmatic red ladies' shoe that isn't resting on the ground outside.
Monochro Observer is a lovely little puzzle/platform game by Japanese game developer Tatsuya Koyama. Control two people, one who lives in dark and one who lives in light, as they cooperate to reach the exit together. Just look at those little munchkins, staring at each other across the impassable divide between worlds. Lonesome. Longing. The fire of passion smoldering in their eyes…okay, not that last part.
Quaint room is a relatively short and easy room escape game, but it is also impressively polished and well-made. The graphics are aesthetically pleasing in a tidy sort of way, and the interface is completely smooth and user-friendly. So, take a break. Relax, step back a few years and enjoy this lovely example of classic Japanese gaming goodness.
Another Room, by Japanese designer Mofuya, is a sweet, semi-short example of classic point-and-click that is executed with near-perfect competence. The game's puzzles are simple but well-crafted; while not wildly creative or different, they nonetheless offer a satisfying variety of problems to tackle. The room's neat, somewhat subdued appearance is pleasing to the eye and makes it simple to navigate the surroundings.
Back to the basics again with Kagi Nochi Tobira 2, the simple and original puzzle game sequel to the very well-received Kagi Nochi Tobira from September of last year. There's not much else to say other than the raw creativity and sense of discovery in these simple puzzle games create an exceptionally engaging and appealing experience. Another example of why simple ideas are often among the most fun!
The player starts in the present day, but with a push of a button can be transported into the same room some indeterminable span of time into the past; press another button and the operation is reversed. Two separate, subtly different rooms to zoom between, each one affecting the other... interesting, no?
Mofuya Defense is an excellent addition to the tower defense genre, featuring an upgradeable base that can defend itself, and a balanced power resource management system. With cute pixel graphics, a comfortable learning curve, a good number of weapons at your disposal, and additional features not found in other tower defense games, Mofuya Defense is definitely worth investing some time in.
The ray gun: time-honored weapon of choice for protection against baddies of all kinds. But if there's nothing to protect against, what good is it? Transmover, a puzzle platformer by Japanese game developers Polygon Gmen introduces a new function for your favorite hand-held emitter of energy: transmotion. In layman's terms, this simply means when you fire your gun at a block, you and the block switch places, a tactic that injects new life into the block-maneuvering platform genre.
An uncommonly lovely escape game that is also, for better and for worse, unusually difficult. We've come to expect great things from Place of Light; their previous games are both excellent and well-executed. With Room Marine, however, they have positively outdone themselves. While the difficulty of the game can be at times taxing, the reward is more than worth it; if you're a serious connoisseur of escape games, you're gonna love this one.
A lovely escape game that does nearly everything right; the graphics are good, the puzzles varied and inventive, the interface clean and user-friendly. Completing Cosmo does take just a smidgen of comprehension of mathematics and astronomy, but it is easily one of the better room escapes to come along recently.
From the creators of Dr. Ichie's Room, Escape from Dr. Ichie's Cafe places you once more in the grasp of the mysterious doctor. He or she has locked you in a cozily wood-paneled cafe, filled with clever puzzles that tread the fine line between challenging and infuriating, providing a mentally stimulating experience that never crosses into head-banging-on-table territory.
T2B Escape 4 offers all the complexity, creativity and whimsy that we've come to expect from this popular escape-the-room series, with the difficulty ramped up a generous handful of notches. It has simple puzzles, complex puzzles, puzzles that cannot be solved until the very end, puzzles that can be cracked with nothing but a little clever thinking... the number and variety are really amazing.
Older material from SKT Products, known for oddball classics like the Moai games and Mr. Sweets, Escargone brings you 30 levels of one-switch snail platforming. Although it drags a bit in the beginning, the patient player will be rewarded when it hits its stride in later levels.
In a world where vehicles are made up of cute, abstract creatures raptured by a conveyor belt, and everything is made of crazy blocks floating against a sky background, only the puzzle solvers will survive. Gurabitchon, another game by the Polygon Gmen, is a real zany stew of physics, gravity manipulation, and conveyor mechanics.
Terminal House is the first of a series of four escape-the-room adventures by developer, GUMP, that chart your oddly pastel-blue hero's quest to gain freedom from mysterious captors; perhaps the least sophisticated of the group, it is nonetheless excellent. I love the game's quirky sensibility, its commingling of surreal elements and standard escape-the-room tropes.
Monolist, from Japanese developer (or possibly super-powered spy team) Polygon Gmen, is what you would get if you took classic Space Invaders gameplay, multiplied it by three, strained it through a net made of Arkanoid bonus drops, and then sprinkled in nine hundred million bullets. Like a recreational energy drink, it's cool, refreshing, burning sweet, and highly caffeinated.
They call him Mr. Sweets. He makes a living selling delicious candy to children with the help of music and a match-three puzzle game, developed by SKT Products. Make combos with magical expanding candy and fill up the customer's happiness meter! It's hard to bring a new twist to a classic and do it well, but SKT know what they're doing.
A simple and charming room escaper from Japan that is just right for an afternoon tea. Filled with objects to find and puzzles to solve, and just a few smallish pixel areas to give you pause. It's simple, short and sweet, like a new year's baby offering promise of a better life ahead. So Happy Birthday 2008!
Cottage is an escape game that manages to successfully combine cleverness with a relatively low level of difficulty; while the puzzles may seem simple, they are still creative and inspired enough to delight even the veteran escape gamers among us. Fabulous graphics, fun puzzles, and an adorably surprising ending... it warms even my cold, grumpy New Yorker's heart.
It's that most special time of year again. Time to get on your softest, most comfortable pajamas, and make a mug of peppermint hot chocolate. A crackling fire would be nice, accompanied by Bing Crosby crooning about white Christmases and silver bells...as you sit down, with a sigh of contentment, to play Neutral's newest holiday room escape game. Ah, that most special time of year, indeed.
Escape from Test Kitchen 2 is a standard escape-the-room game from Japan, somewhat reminiscent of a game from the gotMail folks. Players must collect bottles and mixers, pieces of a map, safe combinations, and the like to find a solution and escape from what appears to be a small cozy restaurant.
In Charisma, you play an orange-jumpsuited, blue-afroed dude who is trapped within what appears to be a combination living room/recording studio. There is a second gentleman inscrutably watching you from behind a glass partition, his hand poised above two buttons. He, for whatever reason, is not going to be of any help (and, in another departure from reality, smashing the glass and demanding he release you is not an option). So, it's up to you to explore the room, figure out what he wants and, eventually, set yourself free.
Neutral Halloween mini-game is what I'm calling this cute and easy escape game with a Halloween theme (well, it used to have a Halloween theme. The pumpkin has been replaced with a piggy bank now.) It features the same excellent implementation features of all the other Neutral games, along with simple yet appealing and effective graphics. I'm sure you will find this one worthwhile of your time!
Dr. Ichie's Room is a solid escape game experience from Japan with polished and appealing graphics, logical puzzles and no pixel hunts necessary. Although the game is from Japan, there are English translations included for all descriptions and explanations, making this Weekday Escape a worthy investment of your time.
Ticket is a brand new game from the talented room escape designers at Gotmail. Like so many of their games to come before, this one features the same highly detailed, gorgeous pre-rendered scenes and the same point-and-clickery puzzles one would expect to find in a game of this nature. The only downside? There is no English version, so that will surely turn off a few.
The Japanese Map Game (for lack of a better translation) is a Flash-based guessing game where you choose regions of Japan and add their population to a counter on the right. The goal is to fill the counter to the outlined squares without going over!
Room escape fans will be pleased to learn of a brand new installment available to play in the T2B Escape series. The new game, T2B Escape 3, features similar artwork, some pixel hunting and the lack of any backstory as in previous games, but that shouldn't stop all the room escape fanatics from enjoying another T2B Escape experience. Go forth, point-and-click your mouse, and escape!
If you're unfamiliar with the Hoshi Saga series, then you're in for a treat as there are now 3 full games for you to experience. For the uninitiated, Hoshi Saga is a simple game of discovery. One part point-and-click and one part puzzle game, the objective in each stage is to find the star. How you go about doing that is different for every level. The task is up to you to figure out how.
White Zone is an intriguingly different sort of room escape game; it does not take place in any sort of concrete space. There are no walls, no ceiling, no door; instead, the player is faced with a few pieces of furniture—two chairs, a television, and a dresser, to be exact—arranged in a circle, seemingly suspended within a white void. Some forgotten corner of the Matrix? Perhaps.
Japanese Mahjong is a completely different game from the tile-matching Mahjong Solitaire. A cross between Gin Rummy and the fictional Dragon Poker, this is one game that will definitely take a while to learn, and even longer to master.
Find key, then find door—
Kagi Nochi Tobira—
How hard could it be?
In Another Side, you inexplicably find yourself confined within a dollhouse-like room, a pretty little place marred by the giant wall of rock that exists in place of a door. That's right, there's not even a door to unlock! But there's plenty to explore and examine.
A deeply satisfying escape game presented by Place of Light, you must find your way out of what is undoubtedly the oddest bathroom you've ever come across; codes and secret panels grace the toilet, gems are scattered across the floor and weird golden masks watch over the sink and bathtub. Perhaps it's the work of some eccentric, puzzle-obsessed billionaire....who has, um, slipped, hit his or her head and forgotten how to escape? Yep, that must be it.
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