40 Best iOS Games Of All Time

35. The Room

Release date: September 19,2012

Developer: Fireproof Games

Publisher: Fireproof Studios

One room, some cryptic notes and a series of increasingly intricate boxes that you have to literally unlock to progress. That might not sound all that exciting, but plenty of people found it to be a captivating formula when they were first introduced to The Room.

Think of other triumphs of atmosphere and puzzle-solving like Myst and you’re on the right track. One of the adjectives used over and over again to describe The Room is tactile, and that’s due to the team at Fireproof figuring out a way to make it feel like you were messing with those locks yourself. Curiosity might have killed the cat (and perhaps even the narrator of the game), but in this case, it compelled you to keep working on unraveling the new mysteries that confronted you each time you made it past another challenge.

It should be said that there was a story going on here too, though opinion was more divided on whether or not it carried a sufficient payoff for those who saw it through to the end. In any case, The Room managed to produce not only a successful sequel but a fair number of copycats as well. None of them quite lived up to the original, making this well worth a look if you’ve somehow managed to avoid playing it to date.

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