Aesthetic Reflection on The Room 4: Old Sins Gameplay

Lynn Burgess PAH 230 August 28, 2023 Aesthetic Reflection The Room 4: Old Sins Gamescape Murray states that “ Video games encourage the observation and exploitation of everything within a game space in terms of potential use-value for the player.” This could not be truer than in The Room 4: Old Sins. As an environmentally driven puzzle game, the player must fixate on every angle and minute detail to progress forward. Every aspect of the many rooms must be picked through with a fine toothcomb to discover needed tools, codes, and lore. An important aspect of the game is the dual views of the rooms and dollhouse, with things looking different through the eyepiece, a tool that is carried throughout the series. This eyepiece reveals a myriad of things, such as hidden symbols, codes, and even enter objects to see the inner workings. There are also images and writings that don’t work toward the progression of the game but rather build up the environment and story. The maximalist appearance of the game greatly encourages players to take in the small details throughout the room. The Room of Curiosities has fewer puzzles than some of the other rooms, however, there is an overwhelming amount of visual information given all at once. One of the puzzles involves matching two masks to each other, however, it’s easy to not notice the second one and assume that the eyepiece is the only tool the player needs. Throughout the

gameplay, the eyepiece is taught to be the player’s primary tool, however, in the case of this puzzle, noticing the small details on the other mask is the only way to complete this puzzle.

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Another puzzle within this room is to get an artificial heart to beat within the chest of the medical model. While focused on this puzzle with or without the eyepiece doesn’t make the answer clear, zooming out to see the entire room shows a heart diagram on the far wall that shows the orientation the arrows need to be in. This focus on the room as its pieces and as a whole is used throughout the game. It’s a key part of the “rules” that are set up. To progress, the player must look at everything in many different ways to see things. This extends to its story. Murray’s “Horizons Already Here Video Games and Landscapes” focuses on gamescapes being spatial stories that drive a player toward the end goal and even comments on the cultural texts that video games have become. The Room 4: Old Sins follows the player attempting to find an unknown element that has been identified as the Null by this point in the game series. Within this entry of the series, the

player views the turmoil the Null has created within the Waldegrave Manor and its residents. To fully understand the story the player reads diary entries from the two residents, Edward and Abigail, a husband and wife. The player is effectively viewing this story from the rules of the game, in two different perspectives. The Room series has long been able the Null and its horrific effects on those that encounter it, with the Circle, an organization, attempting to collect as much as possible. There is a clear cultural commentary in this game, warning against pursuing knowledge that is clearly dangerous. Visuals It’s easy to see from a simple glance at The Room 4: Old Sins that the developers are aiming for a realistic look to the game. As shown in this screenshot light affects objects in a natural way, casting dark shadows further back on the dollhouse with the direct light catching on the front of it as well as objects in front casting shadows onto those behind it, such as the gate pillars casting a shadow onto the facade behind it.

All of this plays into the idea that the player is fully immersed in this world to solve these puzzles and break the seal on the Null. The hyperrealism forces the player to constantly take in a large amount of information, pushing them to pick through these details to find what is truly important. This overload of information makes the puzzles a tad more difficult, as it is hard to determine what is an object that can not be interacted with and what can be interacted with. Even so, the environment is a great indicator of what needs to get done to progress. In the image above there is a seal on the attic of the dollhouse, each of the symbols on the seal must be destroyed to continue. This is done by gathering artifacts from each of the rooms. As shown in the screenshot below, a symbol is visible through the eyeglass piece on the face of each room.

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On top of the maximalist approach to the game to keep the eye moving, the importance of the eyeglass to the gameplay means that the player is constantly viewing the game from another lens. This is apparent when things are hidden from the naked eye, such as a vase in the Room of Curiosities. The blueish hue of the vase is used throughout while using the eyeglass, it is the color that the developers use to show what isn’t seen by the naked eye. The only time this color is not used for things unseen is the symbols on the faces of the room and scenes told by the room, those remain red to clearly separate them from the markings left intentionally by other characters within the game. What little use of expressive color throughout the game serves to further the game or, in the case of the scenes shown to the player, to further the plot. During these scenes, red is the primary color, with silhouettes of a man and woman arguing or fighting in some way. Red is a

color deeply associated with anger or danger, which is clear during these scenes. The room around them is even case a red tint that washes over the room. There is a certain stress placed on the danger being all around during these scenes.

These visuals play one of the important roles besides guiding the player's actions throughout the game and that is to set the tone. There is nothing comforting about the visuals, they are gritty and realistic, imitating real life in a drab and gloomy manner. The game isn’t to bring any comfort to the player as they solve the puzzles and uncover the story. The visuals can also be linked to the difficulty of the game. Many realistic-looking games are thought to be more aimed towards adults because of their difficulty and story beats. This is certainly true for The Room 4: Old Sins. While the puzzles are not overly challenging, during my own playthrough I used a fair amount of hints to lead me in the right direction. The expectations of the game based solely on its graphics and visuals are fairly congruent. Regarding Old Sins’ style, it’s simple to say that it’s illusionism. Upon my initial play, I would have labeled the game realism. Realism could work, however, the supernatural aspects of

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the game regarding the Null and its black tendrils that consume the rooms upon completion push the game into that illusionism style. This small distinction, however, still makes properly categorizing The Room 4: Old Sins more difficult. As shown by Cho, Donovan, and Less in “Art in an Algorithm” proper taxonomy is difficult, given how subjective games and art are inherent. Sound The audio within The Room 4: Old Sins can be separated into two sections. Non-diegetic, and diegetic sounds. The diegetic sounds, the ones that exist within the game and have a clear source, are easy to understand. Every drawer, item, radio, and even the eyepiece has a sound that the player can hear. These diegetic sounds play into the hyperrealism that surrounds this game and allow the player to become engrossed in it. Small things, like air passing by the player as the player zooms in and out of certain areas as well as rushing water or the sound of steam continuing throughout the game, flesh out this world. To note, there is no spoken dialogue, except for coordinates that are given for a puzzle. The letters are not voices, and there are no words spoken with cutscenes. I feel that this is

important to know because it makes the game fair more eerie. Many games have noises that resemble speech or even actual dialogue to make the games more familiar. The Room 4: Old Since lack of spoken dialogue makes things unnerving. There is little to no human interaction, besides the existing books with the writings of Edward and Abiagal. Moving to the non-diegetic, there’s a noticeable lack of it. The only background noise that exists is in the menu, with unsettling instruments that play in a roundabout way. The music exists in a near-perfect loop, mirroring the slow insanity that Edward falls into throughout the game. While this lack of non-diegetic sounds does play a role in adding to the hyperrealism of this game, it also serves another important purpose. While the diegetic noise certainly fills the

silence, there are moments throughout the game, specifically when at the dollhouse, when the silence can become deafening. It adds greatly to the overall unsettling atmosphere that The Room series is known for.

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Controls & Interface The Room 4: Old Sins is a point-and-click game. The difficulty of the game was to come from the gameplay, not the controls. By making the control simple and intuitive, the game’s difficulty is derived only from the puzzles. Another reason for the simplicity of the controls is that they mirror real life. In real escape rooms, the participant picks up and manipulates a piece. Similar to the point-and-click nature of the game. The zoom-in and out feature mirrors moving across the room and bringing an object closer to your eye.

With its simplistic controls, also came a simple interface. Within the game, The interface takes up only a small section of the screen. Off to the left side is the inventory, always in view of the player to remind them of the tools at their disposal. On the right side of the screen is the eyeglass, also always known to the player to push its use in the different rooms. These placements draw enough attention to themselves without being overkill. Jorgenson speaks about how these types of interfaces interact with players, “The common denominator is that they all position themselves in a dimension somewhere between the screen and the interior of the game world. Often, however, an interface feature may be part of the game world while communicating to the player on the outside, or vice versa.” In the case of The Room 4: Old Sins, it seems that the interface isn’t within the world itself. It implied that the inventory and the eyeglass are things that are on the player character, rather than surrounding the player character’s vision. The simple interface and controls all play toward the focus of the game being on the puzzles rather than outside factors, such as clicking through menus and juggling the functions of a variety of buttons.

Works Cited Cho, Hyerim, et al. “Art in an Algorithm: A Taxonomy for Describing Video Game VisualStyles.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, vol. 69, no. 5, 2018, pp. 633–646., doi:10.1002/asi.23988. Jørgensen, Kristine. “Between the Game System and the Fictional World.” Games and Culture, vol. 7, no. 2, 2012, pp. 142–163., doi:10.1177/1555412012440315. Soraya Murray (2020) “Horizons Already Here: Video Games and Landscape”, Art Journal , 79:2, 42-49, DOI: 10.1080/00043249.2020.1765553

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