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Fuzzy Logic - Escape from the Yellow Room 3 Review

12K View2022-09-20

The first thing you should know about Escape from the Yellow Room 3 is that the room is not yellow. In fact, you’ll visit more than one room, and none of them are yellow. I suppose this is just a quirk of sequel naming conventions; I haven’t played the first Yellow Room, but from glancing at some screenshots, it does, indeed, seem to take place in a yellow room. But that immediate and stunning disconnect between this game’s title and its content really set a tone for me that carried through to the whole experience.

Escape from the Yellow Room 3 comes to us via Japanese developer Hozdesign, a team that specializes in short-form mobile escape games. This studio has done over a dozen games in this style, often themed after a single concept—Escape Game Stairs, Escape Game Elevator, Escape Game Noir, Escape Game Red, and so on. But Escape from the Yellow Room is by far the team’s most popular game and, as far as I can tell, the only one that has warranted sequels.

Don’t mistake the franchised nature of this series as an indicator of some sort of continuing narrative, though. Aside from an opening chunk of text explaining that you’ve been trapped inside of a strange room, there is absolutely zero story in Escape from the Yellow Room 3. An argument could be made that the game is providing environmental storytelling of some sort, but I’d be skeptical of that argument without hearing details. As is the environments are stark white rooms with items such as chairs, books, balloons, and levers placed seemingly at random. I could not discern any meaningful details about the world this takes place in or who might have trapped me in the room or anything like that.

With no plot to drive things forward, you’re given one simple, direct goal, and it’s the same one laid out in the game’s straightforward title: escape. And escaping means interacting with the few items in the environment to solve a series of obscure puzzles via mystifying clues. Let me describe one of the game’s puzzles just to offer an example of how bizarre they get.

The “room” you’re trapped in actually has four floors that can be accessed via a ladder. On the second floor, you’ll discover a book that has four colors written in it: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. Back on the first first floor, there’s a “3” symbol on the wall that rotates when you touch it; similar symbols on each floor rotate alongside whatever the first floor’s symbol is set to. If you rotate the “3” until it looks like an “M” (for Magenta), you can then return to the second floor and the “M” set into the wall there will be clickable suddenly. Pressing it turns the second floor’s walls from a clean white to an eye-searing purple. Once the second floor has been turned purple, you can return to the first floor, turn off the lights, and look through a series of holes in the wall to see into three other purple rooms, where stars are now visible on the wall. Counting those stars reveals three in the first room, seven in the second, and one in the third. A series of three levers on a nearby wall on the first floor has also had its tips turned purple. This is your clue that the levers should be pulled in the exact number of times indicated by the rooms: 3-7-1. Doing this causes an item to drop into a pipe on the second floor.

If reading that sounds like absolute nonsense, please let me assure you: Playing it feels the same. I’ve been playing point-and-click adventure games my whole life, so I can handle video games with goofy logic or that require players to make insane leaps of deduction to get from one point to the next. The issue with Escape from the Yellow Room 3 is that’s all it has. There’s no story or characterization gluing things together. There’s not even a hint system for when most players inevitably get stuck. Call me stupid, but I cannot imagine figuring out the handful of tortured riddles here without turning to a guide eventually.

I say handful because in addition to being confusing, Escape from the Yellow Room 3 is also, at its heart, extremely short. If you know exactly what to do and rush from beginning to end, the game can be completed in well under ten minutes. The only reason it took me an hour or so was because I spent a lot of time trying to figure out each puzzle on my own before I’d give up and check a guide.

To be clear, I’m not complaining about Escape from the Yellow Room 3’s length. I’m fine with games being short, especially when they’re completely free, as this title is. If anything, I’m more annoyed at how the game’s runtime is artificially extended due to its frustrating anti-logic. The game seems to know that players will struggle to figure out the form and function of its challenges. That seems to be the point.

Given that Hozdesign has made and continues to make plenty of these short-form escape room games, it’s possible that I’m just not the target audience. But again, I love the genre that this sub-genre has spun out from. I love adventure games that force me to think outside the box and have often ridiculous solutions. Heck, I even loved Gabriel Knight 3, and that has one of the most infamously terrible adventure game puzzles of all time—the dreaded cat hair puzzle.

I just wish that Escape from the Yellow Room 3 gave me a little more to grasp onto beyond its twisted adventure game logic. Tell me something about the world. Give me a character that comments on how confusing this all is. Anything that offers a little more purpose and motivation other than racking my brain to tie together these loosely sketched conundrums. As is, solving the final puzzle and unlocking the door to freedom felt like a relief for all the wrong reasons.

SCORE: 2 STARS OUT OF 5

PLAY IF YOU LIKE:

• Escape games. Maybe this is obvious, but if you’re fond of other escape games, whether the IRL variety or other digital versions such as 3D Escape Game: Chinese Room, it’s possible that Escape from the Yellow Room 3 will click better for you than it did for me.

💬 Have you played Escape from the Yellow Room 3? If so, do you think I’m missing the appeal? And if not, what’s your favorite old-school adventure game that uses bizarre logic for its puzzles?

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Escape from the Yellow Room 3

8.2

AdventurePuzzleEscape Room

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Comments

gugugu

I actually like the disconnection, absurdity, and shortness. Any more puzzles and I would probably give up. For me, it's more atmospheric than mystery. It's one of the games that you just download, play, finish and delete.

2022-09-20

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