I played Tiny Room Story: Town Mystery, created by Kiary Games. It is available on several platforms, including Steam and the App Store. I downloaded the game on my iPad off of the App Store. The official age rating is 4+, and while appropriate, I think this game would be pretty challenging for very young children. In my opinion, the target audience would be more accurately described as 10+ and interested in puzzles/escape games.
The game starts by informing you that you are a private detective who has just received a mysterious letter from your father asking you to help him solve a mystery (Fig 1). I liked that this addition sets up the puzzle solving in a compelling way, with some sort of end goal and continuous storyline, instead of solving puzzles for the sake of solving them. For my group’s P2 project, we are planning on creating some sort of mystery game where the players all get clues and have to find out what happened, similar to Unsolved games. We will also be highly relying on a narrative to shape the mechanics, so Tiny Room Story: Town Mystery definitely had components I was excited to explore and take inspiration from.
Figure 1
One of the key mechanics when exploring the different buildings was rotating to see different parts of it (Fig 2). This was difficult to get used to at first, because it takes a greater amount of control than I was used to to focus on a specific part of the room and stop the rotating at that point. To explore specific clues, you can tap on items, which will either reveal a clue (like a laptop you must enter a password into), save the item into your inventory for later use, or have a reaction insignificant to the overall puzzle solving (such as your character saying something or the item moving).
Figure 2
I actually enjoyed these reactions that did not necessarily give you specific clues the most. For example, when I found a gun in a drawer, even though we did not collect the gun or use it to get any more clues, the character comments on how uncharacteristic it is of his dad to have a gun and wonders why he has one. I would have liked to see even more of this. There were many places where there were photos or paintings of people, and it would have been nice if clicking on those gave you some more context about their family. This would have made me more invested in the story. Overall, although the narrative woven through the mysteries definitely motivated me to explore clues, it still felt like several escape room games loosely tied together. The biggest thing that would have helped the narrative be more intertwined with the puzzle solving is having all the locations connect in some way. The detective is tracing his way through the town from beginning to end, so once we leave one location, it just seems like we arrive at another random location to explore. It may have been more effective to have at least one narrative element that leads you to the next location, like a clue in a previous location or talking to an NPC.
This game does not perform the best when evaluated for accessibility. Specifically for users with mobility issues or blind/low vision users, I can see how this game would be very challenging. The mechanic of rotating rooms requires precise movement in order to stop the rotation in whichever specific orientation you wanted. Many of the clues require you to read words written on very small font with very little contrast (Fig 3). To figure out which way to explore, users must notice small and specific clues, such as a mailbox on the roof which might lead the user to prop up the ladder (Fig 4). In Figure 5, the user must remember the arrangement of the books in the photo and recreate it. If a user is not able to see well enough to distinguish each individual book from another one, this clue would be impossible to solve. There are no accessibility settings, like high contrast or helpful tooltips (Fig 6).
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
