REVIEW: The White Chamber

[c_nordlander]

I've been meaning to review some interesting computer games for a long while, so here goes.

The White Chamber

^imagine that's white

Not to be confused with The Crimson Room, or The Viridian Room, or The Red Room. (The last one is funniest if you've done a course in Swedish literature.)

"The White Room" is a science fiction/horror point-and-click adventure game by Studio Trophis, available to download for free here. If you just want to know "is it worth it?", I might as well say now: yes, it is if you like adventure games and aren't put off by body parts.

The longer version:

You play as a young woman who could pass for a Yu-Gi-Oh GX lead who wakes up in a space station with AMNESIA! There is no-one else in the station. Well... there are bits. Of people. And it's up to you to search for a way out and figure out what the hell happened to the rest of the crew.

OK, so as set-ups go, it's not incredibly original, but it's still a good claustrophobic plot that gives you a good motivation to want to get out, and the game takes it certain ways that felt original, at least to me. For obvious reasons, I can't talk about those twists without spoiling, but suffice it to say, they're plausible (as in, not coming completely out of nowhere), and frightening. The game has a big advantage on a lot of freeware horror games of having a coherent plot, not just "a bunch of scary things that happen for no reason". It seems rather incoherent at first, but it all works together quite well in the end. The writing is consistently good.

Oh, and there are multiple endings, which I always like. Some good, some less good. They provide replay value, though I had to look at a walkthrough to find out how to get the various endings, which breaks immersion a bit. The mechanism is rather different from other games with multiple endings I've played: you don't so much get different paths, as different endings depending on the morality of your actions (a lot less preachy and weirder than I make it sound). It's not easy to figure out, but nicely original.

The surface stuff: graphics and sound. After seeing screenshots, I was prepared to be underwhelmed by the graphics: as demonstrated, character designs are extremely animésque (the producers are British, I believe). For all that, they grew on me. The protagonist's character portrait has different expressions depending on her feelings when examining or talking about something: a nice touch. The backgrounds are perhaps rather cartoony, but still get the mood across. (I could have done with a little more photorealism, but some things you come across are probably better off as more unrealistic-looking.) The voice acting is good, though sometimes vaguely melodramatic. The male lead occasionally reminded me of Nicole in this little drama. The music and sound effect aren't mind-blowingly awesome, but again, they get the job done to full satisfaction, and *will* creep you out in places.

Puzzles run the whole gamut from logical and inspired, to weird, to utterly whacky, to the simply sloppy. At one point, you just have to leave and enter a room for events to progress without any actual action from your part. The game world is small enough (without being cramped) that you have a fairly good focus on what you need to do, though. I think the good puzzles are good enough to make the bad ones worth it.

When in the "controlling the robot" puzzle, move the robot with your arrow keys and execute the default command with the space bar. Yes, this is a spoiler. I wish someone had spoiled *me*.

You can die, but only in a few places, and it's usually very easy to figure out how not to. This isn't a save-load fest.

The above should pretty much outline the good and the bad stuff. It's a short game (I finished it in a couple of days, with a hint or two, admittedly), but since it's freeware, it's not like you lose any money. It's full of blood and crazy and seemingly-disjointed scenes that fit together in the end. Some good puzzles, some bad ones. There is the occasional mood-breaking moment (an appearance by Gabe and Tycho, for one thing), but they are rare. It reminded me a lot of the Chzo Mythos games, particularly "Trilby's Notes", both in storyline and in level of gore. If you enjoyed it, this might be the game for you. Definitely PG.

And sweet dreams!