The Room Three

The Room Three pushes the series a step further – instead of a single box or a couple of rooms, it offers an interconnected complex of halls and machines on a mysterious island, through which you move while solving puzzles more branching and interlinked than ever before. Touch controls remain at the heart of the experience, but the game adds a choice between several possible endings, something earlier games didn't have, and for the first time gives you a reason to play through it more than once to see where other choices lead. The individual mechanisms and locks are more complex and interconnected, so you often have to carry knowledge and objects from one room to another, which significantly lengthens the game compared to earlier entries.

Fireproof Games released the game in 2015, two years after the second one, and clearly tried not to let the series slide into routine – the greater scope, longer playtime, and multiple endings show an ambition to turn the puzzle series into a fuller adventure with its own structure. The gothic, slightly sinister atmosphere stays the same as in earlier entries, only with a darker and more intricate story about the mysterious island, its inhabitants, and their motives, gradually revealed through letters and notes found in the individual halls.

Reception was positive, and many reviews praised precisely the scope and multi-ending structure as a logical next step for a series that had already built a solid core of fans in earlier entries who expected ever more elaborate puzzles and a longer, richer experience.

Why play it: For fans of the series who want a bigger, more structured puzzle with a branching ending, not just another sealed box.