Rooms: The Main Building Critic Reviews

Nintendo made a wise choice releasing Rooms: The Main Building in Europe, not merely because it was a sound business decision given the current market trends, but because Hudson / Handmade Game's DS sliding-tile-puzzler-with-a-twist is a contender for 'Best in Genre,' proving to be a highly enjoyable, must-try experience on the Nintendo DS.

Overall, the gameplay of Rooms: The Main Building trumps the presentation issues. It's fun, and it's easy to pick up and let go at a whim, making it a great portable title.

A bit more story or presentational flair would've been appreciated, but even as it is, Rooms offers a unique and worthwhile challenge for portable-puzzle junkies.

Despite all these gripes, Rooms is still a blast to play. While $30 may seem a bit steep for the title that, when boiled down, is nothing more than an advanced slide puzzle, once the game inevitably lands in the bargain bins it is definitely recommended for any puzzle fan.

Amazingly, Rooms manages to turn hateful tile-slide puzzles into something compulsive and fun. As a package, however, it's a little disappointing.

Fun, but limited.

Rooms: The Main Building is a great puzzle game in an ugly coating. The puzzles are well put together and stay fresh because of the constant stream of new elements. It's too bad that the unclear images, ugly colours and downright annoying music takes away some of the fun.

It's fun, and it's easy to pick up, but repetitive.

Rooms The Main Building it's a nice puzzle game that won't turn the genre upside-down. But if you like this kind of games, it's a pleasant addiction to the DS library.

Rooms' bland and blurry visuals will do little to attract potential players. Its flaws will likely put off all but the hardiest of puzzle fans, but ultimately this is the exact audience the game was designed for.

Rooms: The Main Building had managed to get our attention, but it fails in the end. It's proof that if good ideas are enough to hook the player, they have to be used with ingenuity for him to keep playing. Rooms interesting game design is cursed with a less-than-inspired level design : the lack of challenge nullifies any pleasure one may get in using the items lined-up to solve the riddles of every stage. Too bad, some of the better rooms were a hint as to what that game could have achieved, but didn't.

A title made for a very specific kind of gamer, the ones who love puzzles above anything else.

Dumb riddles, pixel-graphics and a much better PC version: Don't buy this if you're not a puzzle freak.

It offers an original concept, but there are things that don't fit well overall.

The few interesting mechanics that are mixed into Rooms' slide puzzles just aren't enough to make it entertaining from start to finish, and the coolest modes are locked from the start.

A really advanced puzzler with huge amount of content. Unfortunately, the quality of the puzzles is really uneven, from pure genious to pure tedious and the presentation isn't that good either. In the end, there far better puzzle games out there, so why bother with a mediocre one.

Quotation forthcoming.

If fewer ideas were crammed in, and those that were left in were developed more thoroughly. Rooms could potentially be an excellent puzzle concept.

Bizarre sliding block puzzler that despite numerous issues is oddly more tolerable than it should be.

The presentation is so poor, with the board and tiles constricted to an area around half the size of one of the DS' screens, that it's almost impossible to see the detail on each tile.