A Hole In My Room first episode is out now, free on Steam for all to check out. It’s a short, creepy puzzler, one that has hints of intrigue and promise, but also not without its foibles.
We start in – appropriately – our room, where there just so happens to be a hole (très surprise) in the ceiling. After a short word from the protagonist James, we find ourselves tasked with a procession of puzzles to solve to escape the few rooms that this slice of the game allows us into.
These take the form of finding the correct item for the correct task – a key for a door, a crowbar to pry a latch open, etc – and in the correct order. A Hole In My Room episode one has a very linear progression system, so much so that we only ever really have one avenue of moving forward at a time.
Puzzle difficulty is fair, with relatively simple logic to follow. The most intriguing puzzle here is one involving a rotating dart-like board, used later in the episode to crack a safe code. The rest of the time we’re simply following from A to B, using keys to open locks to grab another item to grab another, and so on.
What compounds the challenge in this first episode is the monster that appears sporadically. As we start out, this creature appears with a warning gong of a clock, our only option being to find a hiding place before it sees us. Should it get its ugly mits on us, we lose one of the in-game days, as well as one of our warning signs.
These warning signs – the clock gong, raised heartbeat, and the monster’s footsteps – are essential to surviving its appearances. Which makes it feel at odds with the game design that we lose one of these each time the monster catches us. We’re already on the back foot by being caught, and now we’re punished by having one of our warning signs taken away? I feel this is done to raise the tension, but considering the monster can one hit kill us with no way to fight it off if we’re cornered, losing any advantage after already failing feels needlessly punishing.
This first outing is at least short, clocking in at about 45 minutes all in, so failing and restarting isn’t a huge time loss. But we’d like to see these punishments reconsidered for future episodes, even if there’s a way to regain what we’ve lost somehow.
A Hole In My Room nails its creepy atmosphere and tension though. The monochrome visuals do wonders for making it feel like a horror experience, and while the monster is presented to us directly within minutes, the audio design means every time it appears it still manages to raise a few hairs on our back.
Conclusion
And what little exposition we get here has us keen to see more, with a few threads left unchecked ready for whatever comes next. This first taster has its flaws, but there’s promise that the horror fan in us is looking forward to seeing realised in future episodes.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
