This isn't going to be a very long review, because... well, this game is just not very long.

This game is, however, a waste of your time. Not a very long waste of your time, seeing as how it takes ten minutes at maximum to finish it, but those ten minutes I lost playing this could have been better spent doing something more productive. You see, this game fails on the basest of levels - the storytelling is sloppy, the concept is poorly executed, the characters are unfulfilled and extremely basic. There is no gameplay, really, so I can't judge that; we are pretty much left with the aesthetics, which I will start with, because that is certainly this game's high point.

The Room is a fairly pleasant-looking game, and has some neat special effects strewn throughout it despite its short length. It would have had a decent atmosphere if not for the bizarre and entirely out-of-place music selection and the cheerful Pokemon sprites. Seriously, Pokemon sprites? In a horror game? It is already hard to take RM* horror games seriously - there is certainly no reason to exacerbate that problem.

But enough about that. How about that story - er, plot, rather.

Why plot? Why not story? This is an important distinction that the creator forgot to think about when putting this game together. Truthfully, The Room is just a series of presumably relevant but uninteresting events that are never really given any genuine meaning or context. The main character gets a computer key code. It allows him to save. He flushes the toilet because it smells and finds a screwdriver. He uses it on the chair because it has a screw loose, and he finds a gun inside. At one point, we find out that one of characters is not a guy, but a girl! But see, that's all that ever really happens. There is no character or setting development, no real background is given, there is no rhyme or reason to anything that goes on in this game. Sure, we are giving the briefest of explanations in the game's extremely rushed and (frankly) dumb ending, but it is merely a capstone of a meaningless series of events that teach us absolutely nothing about the setting or the characters. There is no story, merely a shell of one - a plot.

On a brief side note, this game is also, I am sorry to say, not a horror game. A toddler would not be scared by this game. Just putting that out there now so as to dampen your expectations even more.

Regarding characters: we have a small assortment of horror movie tropes in The Room - the old gentleman, the whiny girl, the brash young teenager and some weird girl who sits in the corner most of the game and is the only one who ever shows the smallest hint of true character development. Frankly, these characters are flat and have zero time to develop as people - as a result, when one of them bites it, there is zero emotional impact. Not an ounce of sympathy. Hell, not even an ounce of laughter. There is no feeling at all. Little Match Girl this is not.

Curiously, there is some potential for characterization near the end of the game, but it ends up just being a pretense and is thrown to the wayside just as quickly, instead leading into the uninspired ending.

In conclusion, it is tragedy that more thought and time was not put into this obviously rushed story, though I do give the author credit for being a little bold and trying something that is off the beaten path. A game with of this type with good writing, direction and presentation would certainly be a welcome sight.

But, my friends, this is not that game. Play something else instead.