Red Room

Intro

"Red Room" is a short visual novel developed by SYU using RPG Maker VX Ace that covers mature themes. These themes include such topics as depression, self injury, and violence. And in some ways I'm not entirely sure what to feel about this game since these aren't topics I particularly like to explore, but seeing as this game was only around 11 minutes long I figured I'd give it a shot.

Story

You play a girl nicknamed BB that spends all of her time in her room where she sketches her feelings in her sketchbook. And the drawings found within are definitely meant to be symbolic considering the subject matter that sits at the heart of this game. Outside of interacting with BB's sketches you can also interact with a few other objects in her room, but how useful that is on a surface level at times is rather debatable.



Gameplay

On the gameplay front there is very little to do here. While the game does include five unique endings. The amount of apparent choices presented to the player comes down to one major choice. Will you or will you not pick up the knife on the table during the game's final day. As for your other choices they come down to choosing if your going to interact with the objects in BB's room or not, but the only way you'd probably guess this would have an impact on the story is if you read the ending manual that is unlocked upon reaching one of the game's five endings.

Graphics

On the graphically side of things the game features entirely custom assets. Albeit a lot of those assets look pretty simple with most objects being rather rudimentary shapes.



Though where the game truly shines on this front is the sketches which tend to look pretty violent with it looking like the colored pencils were pressed into the paper as hard as possible



Sound

On the plus side the game does feature an entirely original background score. On the other hand I tended to find the background music in this game rather forgettable. Though I suppose that's the case for most games in my experience. I tend to only pay attention to the background music if it really catches my ear.

Conclusion

"Red Room" is a hard project for me to judge since it's so far outside of my comfort zone that I even found commentating on the game as I played it rather difficult. While I realize there is a market for games like this. My usually rule of thumb is to avoid them. And this game really didn't change my mind on that perspective. If you like games about people cutting themselves and distancing themselves from others this might just be the short visual novel your looking for. Other wise I'd advice giving this game a pass.