To be honest, when I saw the name "Escape Room 16 Temple Ruins", I was stunned for a moment. It's not because the game itself is so shocking, but because it suddenly reminds me of my first smartphone, the Nokia 5230. At that time, I couldn't even use the touch screen, so I would play pixelated escape room games in bed every day. The picture is as rough as a mosaic, and the clue logic is simple, but it makes me unable to stop turning it off and on, and I am still scratching my head at the screen at three in the morning.
Now that I have played "Escape Room 16", my first impression is that the graphics are really exquisite. The stone sculptures, vines, and temple ruins in the scene are very particular about the light and shadow levels, which are in line with the current standards of mobile games. But to be honest, what really attracts me is not the picture, but the familiar "sense of exploration" - click here and there, look around, find a key or a symbol, and then suddenly a flash of inspiration solves a puzzle that I couldn't figure out before. That feeling is exactly the same as the joy of finding a hidden item on a Symbian plane twenty years ago.
The story setting of the game is quite interesting. In a modern heritage park, creatures from Slavic mythology coexist with humans. The protagonist is a botanist who receives an invitation letter from his grandmother to save an endangered plant, but ends up dragging out the mysterious man Blue. The plot is not complicated, but the atmosphere is well created. The eerie temple entrance at the beginning gave me goosebumps. It has the "scared but want to continue" flavor of old-fashioned puzzle games. But I have to be fair. The difficulty of the puzzles is above average. There were a few places where I got stuck for a long time, and I finally found the hints by messing around.
The developer is Shenzhen Martian Interactive Entertainment. To be honest, I don't know much about this company, but it can be considered sincere to make the map of the puzzle game so wide and to hide the clues so densely. Moreover, this game is stand-alone, and there are no messy cash pop-ups. For experienced players who are used to figuring out each level by themselves, the experience is very comfortable. In the current mobile game market, there are not many games that can calm down and have a pure decryption experience. Most of them are engaged in drawing cards and rankings, which makes people restless.
Enough about nostalgia, let's talk about something real. If you have played "Tower of Mysteries", "Maze of the Machine" or earlier flash decryption games before, then "Escape Room 16 Temple Ruins" should suit your appetite. It has a solid sense of old-school puzzle solving. It does not rely on fancy performances, but just allows you to rummage through the map and piece together the clues bit by bit. When I played the third chapter, I suddenly remembered that I used Sony Ericsson to play the abandoned version of "Assassin's Creed", and it was the same feeling of competing against the screen alone.
Of course it's not without its shortcomings. The hints for some puzzles were not clear enough, such as the turntable related to Slavic runes. I didn't understand the rules, so I finally checked the guide before going over. In addition, the Chinese font is a bit small, which makes veteran players cry. But in general, this game is considered to be above average among similar mobile games, and it is especially suitable for playing two levels on the commute or before going to bed.
Let's say one final emotion. From Symbian to Android, from pixels to high-definition modeling, decryption games have changed one after another, but the "Aha! That's it!" moment is always the most addictive. Not to brag, this game can make me feel a little bit like I was when I was young, and it's worth the price of admission. After all, what we miss is not those old games, but the one who still had the patience to sit down and think hard for a virtual key. 😌