There was an earth-shattering event that happened last month, and the mainstream media didn’t even cover it. I am talking, of course, about the release of The Room: Old Sins, the fourth installment of the greatest iPhone game series in the universe. I await these games as I would the birth of a child, or a lump sum check of lottery winnings. When a new The Room game comes out, I forsake all other responsibilities and rudely play it everywhere I can: during work, on the toilet, in the midst of a fire drill, and such and such. My kids can raise themselves.
If you’re unfamiliar with The Room, that is because your life is sucky and unfulfilling. They are essentially room-escape games, only designed with an impossible amount of detail and care, to the point where they feel like you’re actually touching the walls. The backstory is that some brilliant Victorian madman has unlocked a terrifying, uncontrollable supernatural power and has left behind a series of fabulously intricate contraptions, Blair Witch–style symbols, and tasteful gibberish notes on parchment to take you, the player, on the same descent into madness that he experienced. This is very fun to do. A special eyepiece lets you see hidden messages and invisible blood stains. It’s like a hotel room blacklight, only not disgusting.
Your job as the player is to examine the little puzzle boxes in each room and unlock the MYSTERIES within. Often, opening one box leads to another, LARGER box erupting out of it. And then I stare at my phone and am like, OH WOW, IT’S A WHOLE OTHER FUCKING BOX, DAMN. It is satisfying on levels I cannot describe. I escape both literally and metaphorically when I play them. Old Sins, the newest game, features a giant dollhouse with a series of rooms, each of which contains clues and items you have to use in other rooms. I now know the inside of this house better than my own. The anatomy model in the Curiosity Room is really fucked up.
I meant to save Old Sins for a plane ride, but I was too horny for puzzles to be patient. Instead, I finished the game and played it AGAIN on the plane. Now I am left lonely and fevered for more room escape action. So I contacted Barry Meade, co-founder of Fireproof Games, to ask him about the series and beg him to make more of these games, faster. Because that always results in good product!
GQ: How do you guys conceive of the puzzles within the games?
Barry Meade: It varies, but in a nutshell: a bit of insight, a bunch of research, and lots of testing. The origin of an idea can be intuitive or inspired by research, but once the designers have the bones of an idea, we generally skip the concepting phase and go straight to making it and playing it. In software, no idea is provably good until it’s playable anyway, so we don’t agonize over our designs, we just get to making it. Then if the designers are happy with the initial rough version, they get others to play it and over time the ideas get polished to a finish, or are changed, or are removed if not working.
How many people and man hours does it take to make the full game?
We’re a team of 17 people now, and over the last year almost everybody worked on Old Sins, though some were there from the start of development and others towards the end. But in total it’s very roughly about 30,000 man hours to make Old Sins.
(NOTE: Goddamn!)
Do you guys write out the story before you start designing the game itself?
That varies, too. For some Room games, the design team know up front. At other times (such as the first two games), we more made it up as we went along. Story, to us, is there to support what we want to achieve in the gameplay, so we’ve never hit players over the head with narrative. But now that we’re four games in, we’ve accrued a lore for the series that acts as our backdrop to any story we tell, that we can always consult, and that players are familiar with and interested in.
Do you see Fireproof starting other game franchises, even though I want you to keep making Room games forever?
Of course. We’re always either talking about or working on other games besides The Room series. For instance, right now we’re investigating a PC/console game that has nothing to do with the tactile puzzles of The Room. As for The Room games themselves, I think we’ll keep making them as long as we can think of something cool to do with them, and I don’t think we’re out of ideas just yet. It’s likely the next Room game we do might be very different from the previous games, so we’ll see.
There’s a game called The House of Da Vinci that clearly lifts elements whole from your series. (I played it all the way through twice.) Does that irritate you?
Creative copying is normal, and "aggressive inspiration" like this is universal to all creative fields. In a business sense, if you have a hit, you have to expect copies or even clones of your game, especially in mobile games, which is a more bottom-dollar environment than other game markets. We were contacted by Blue Brain Games when they released their game, and I helped them with some press contacts and congratulated them and wished them well.
But on a personal level, I find clones dispiriting, especially well-made ones, as in those cases the teams obviously have a talent for making, which their creative leadership can’t live up to. So regardless of how good a clone is, making one is at the very least a conservative act and at most a bankrupt one. But that’s just me.
What do I do with my life while waiting for the NEXT room game?
I feel your pain. My advice would be to send Fireproof a check to show us your appreciation. It won’t solve your direct problem, but it will help us get the rounds in down the pub, and what creative doesn’t get inspired down the pub? Basically, the more beer we drink, the better you’ll feel. So ask yourself whether you’re serious about helping yourself or not.
Can you build a real house like the one in Old Sins so I can visit it, like a weirdo?
No.
