The Room Two

The Room Two leaves behind the single sealed box of the first game and spreads its puzzles across several connected rooms, between which you move using the same touch language the series established – rotating, sliding, and zooming into hidden mechanisms with a magnifying glass. The principle stays the same: each solved lock reveals another layer of the mystery, only now the puzzles aren't hidden just inside one object but also in furniture, walls, paintings, and objects scattered around the whole scene, which gives the game a sense of spatial exploration on top of the mechanical puzzle-solving the series is built on. A few new types of mechanisms are added too, such as light-and-shadow puzzles that were missing from the first game.

Fireproof Games released the sequel in 2013, just a year after the first game, and it was more an expansion of a proven formula than a fundamental transformation of it – the series was well aware of what worked in the first game and didn't want to risk it with major changes to the mechanics or controls. The mysterious thread about the Craftsman and his enigmatic machines continues and deepens, and the dark gothic atmosphere and quiet, tense music remain as evocative as before, accompanying the player through every room to the final revelation.

Critical reception was largely warm, and the sequel was praised as proof that a longer and more varied environment suits the series well without it losing the hypnotic pace that made the first game famous and won it so many loyal players.

Why play it: For anyone who liked the first The Room and wants more similar puzzles in a somewhat more varied environment, without changing what worked.