For this critical play, I tried Tiny Room Story: Town Mystery by Kiary Games Ltd on IOS. This simple yet enrapturing mystery game enables the player to become immersed in its narrative through 3D spatial puzzles and intertwining gameplay with narrative progression. The core of this game depends on players not just solving puzzles, but unraveling pieces of a larger mystery through exploration.
Tiny Room Story utilizes embedded narrative to create a compelling and immersive experience with a classic movie detective mystery feel. This is most visible in the game’s core mechanics: players interact with the world by rotating diorama-like environments, clicking to zoom into interactive areas/objects, and collecting relevant helpful items.
These mechanics position the player in a uniquely observant role; notably, not playing a character physically navigating the world but as a distanced agent examining scenes from above. This distance adds a layer of separation that is critical to balancing the line between interactivity, observation, and immersion. Unlike other first-person narrative games like Firewatch where physical bodily immersion is central, Tiny Room Story de-emphasizes physicality. There is no walking, running, stamina limits, or health bar. This absence of a physical body then shifts the player’s focus to fully immerse in decoding the environment and piecing together narrative fragments. Combined with having the main exploring mechanic view the space from afar, the experience becomes focused on the overarching narrative rather than a player body and human perspective. This creates a fundamentally different experience of revealing the narrative, rather than living and experiencing the events as they happen.
Furthermore, the architecture of the game truly brings together environment and story to form its embedded narrative. Each chapter is a self-contained spatial puzzle and mystery in its own, yet also part of a larger overarching mystery. As players solve one room and unlock another, they also uncover new layers of the narrative. The spaces themselves reveal information, driven primarily by the player. A few examples of levels include an abandoned home, a creepy church, and secret cave with unknown technology. Clues about what’s happened in this empty ghost town are embedded within the design of each space, leading the player to discover parts of the overarching story as they explore the space—rather than, for example, through cutscenes at the end of a level.
Each space is purposeful and narrative specific, showing and allowing the player to experience the story themselves rather than being told what’s happening. In this way, the architecture of the game becomes the story itself.
One thing I wish I had seen more of in this game is accessibility features. After playing Tiny Room Story on both iPhone and iPad, I did encounter a few barriers which made it more difficult to play. There are no provided accessibility settings; no adjustable input controls or interaction styles to accommodate different players. One key exploration mechanic is the ability to click on areas or investigable objects to zoom in and get a closer look, for example bookshelves, desks, boxes, drawers, and so on. The hitbox—the pressable area of the screen that triggers the zoom in—is relatively large and easy to click even on accident, presumably to facilitate the player finding it. However, exiting the zoom-in is only doable through clicking a back button; there is no ability to swipe away or otherwise gesture to zoom out.
Playing on an iPhone, it quickly became tiring to have to constantly move my hand to the back button as my other hand held the device, and even more so with an iPad. Having to repeatedly and precisely click a back button to exit the scene presents a potential accessibility barrier for those with impaired or limited mobility, or those playing with one hand.
Interestingly, the game inadvertently supports more accessible movement when traversing between rooms. Players can change angles of view by swiping, and can move rooms by tapping on doors or the floor behind a door.
The hitboxes for these exits are also much more generous; even tapping on a section of wall next to the door can trigger it. While this may not have been deliberately implemented as an accessibility feature, it does reduce the level of fine motor precision needed to use this mechanic, and allows for easier play from different positions or grip styles. That being said, these design choices are isolated to this specific navigation mechanic. There could certainly be more inclusive design choices like customizable controls, gesture recognition, and UI scaling options to create a more accessible experience across a wider range of players.
Overall, as a player and as a game designer, this experience was a refreshing callback to nostalgic 2D point-and-click mystery detective games. The storytelling of the game intentionally intertwines with the game’s architecture and player exploration to create an embedded narrative. While there is considerable potential for accessibility improvements, the game still does an excellent job providing mechanics that immerse the player in their role as an investigator. Games like Tiny Room Story offer valuable insight into both successful design choices and potential areas of improvement behind interactive embedded narratives.
