Room Escape 5 review: exactly what you'd expect

For most of us, getting out of a room is as simple as walking out the door. But if you’ve ever wished that it was a lot more complicated than that, you’re probably already aware of the room escape subgenre of puzzle games. The genre is extremely popular in China—so popular in fact, that companies are making a killing offering real-life room escape puzzles there. And Room Escape 5, an iOS game from developer Zhu Shuisheng, is following that trend, having already shot onto the Chinese App Store games top 10 list in the week since its release last Tuesday.

So what is Room Escape 5? It’s exactly what you’d expect, if you’ve ever played another room escape game. You start in a room that you tap around, looking for objects and clues. In a typical room you might collect a few objects, tap them in sequence to put them together, tap your new object on something else in the world to reveal a clue, and ultimately discover the location of a key that opens the door. Of course, when you do open the door, it takes you into another locked room.

It’s simple, but Room Escape 5 has a lot going for it in comparison to some of the other room escape games I’ve played. There’s an interesting thematic assortment of rooms, although the progression doesn’t make much logical sense—you might escape from a victorian parlor into a warehouse, for example, and the warehouse door might somehow lead into an airplane. And the rooms look pretty good! There’s quite a bit of detail, yet things are simple enough that you can generally figure out what you can interact with and what’s simply window dressing.

The puzzles themselves are pretty well done. In 30 minutes or so I was able to clear quite a few rooms, and the experience was tough enough to be satisfying but not so tough as to be frustrating. Occasionally they can be a little bit illogical, but the rooms are small enough that you’ll probably figure everything out sooner or later if you give yourself enough time.

There is a strong downside to Room Escape 5, though, and that’s the monetization. The game features static ads while you’re playing that take up a significant portion of the screen. Between levels, you’ll sometimes be bombarded with additional video ads that play under the static ads, and at the same time as the game’s background music. The game also features in-app purchases of hints in case you ever get stuck. I don’t begrudge a developer making money, of course, but the ads in Room Escape 5 are excessive and poorly-integrated. It certainly harms the experience from a gamer’s perspective, and I doubt advertisers would be too happy to see their ads being displayed like this, either:

The ads are tolerable, though, if you’re someone who really enjoys the experience of a room escape game. There’s not much new on offer in Room Escape 5, but what is there is pretty solid.

(It’s also worth noting that the game is available in a bunch of Asian languages including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean in addition to English).