Room 40

"Room 40" is a badly made RPG Maker asset flip with a bonus, they tried to use RPG Maker into a cryptography game... and one of the things you might think about cryptographers is they should be pretty good at spelling, because a typo in a cipher is really going to screw up the whole thing. Well, if you thought that, you were wrong, because Room 40 is riddled with typos, unfun cryptographical challenges, and the usual really garbage stock RPG Maker assets that everyone hates. This is "free" enough, at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at less than 100 concurrent players, and now there's basically nobody playing it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? Not this time. This isn't worth downloading. While this doesn't cost me any money, I still feel ripped …

The main character is well developed, and I like the way her story was told. The puzzles are easy at first but the difficulty ramps up towards the end: the q bomb ciphers and the bonus ciphers are too hard for me. I would have preferred the UI to be better, and for there to be better hints, but as a whole for the price its pretty good. I would recommend this to people who have some form of experience cracking ciphers, because the way the game teaches you to do it is not good. When playing, have a word finder/unscrambler on hand, as well as some pen and paper and you should be good.

Игра 'Room 40' - это захватывающий и напряженный квест в жанре "найди выход". Игра погружает в атмосферу таинственного бункера, где каждая деталь, каждый предмет имеет значение. Головоломки хорошо продуманы и требуют логики, наблюдательности и умения работать в команде, если играете с друзьями. Графика создает гнетущую атмосферу, а звуковое сопровождение добавляет напряжения, заставляя сердце биться чаще. Несмотря на некоторую сложность, игра не кажется невозможной. Подсказки, хотя и даются намеками, помогают не застрять на одном месте надолго. История, раскрывающаяся по мере продвижения, интригует и заставляет двигаться вперёд, чтобы узнать, что же случилось в этом загадочном месте. Мне понравилось, что игра не перегружена скримерами, а основной упор сделан на атмосферу и решение головоломок. Отлично подходит для любителей квестов и тех, кто ищет игру, которая заставит поломать голову. Определенно рекомендую для тех, кто хочет проверить свою смекалку и умение решать сложные задачи.

I'm ngl I'm not smart enough for this game so I looked everything up LMAO, but I really liked the story and Amy feels pretty realistic and relatable, you find yourself wanting to legitimately cheer for her (at least I did). The dialogue is pretty good imo, and I loved the overall look to the game. The only complaint I have for the game is that the controls are kind of unconventional and confusing at times and some characters deserved a bit more depth to them because they felt a little 2-dimensional at times. The ending is pretty heart-warming as well as satisfying.

i have no idea how ratings are only at 74% considering it's literally free

Very intriguing story ruined by some very weird cipher choices. The typos are sometimes annoying, yes, but you can probably manage those. But the game completely ceases being a game about halfway through when you are given a polyalphabetic cipher with 2+ alphabets with basically 0 useful analysis and no quality-of-life UX for attempting a solution in the substitution table mode. That is because those modes seem to have been created with much simpler ciphers in mind and at that point you are basically forced to do frequency analysis, etc by hand. If that's something you like - go for it. Otherwise skip.