Rooms of Doom is a new free-to-play mobile game from the makers of Crossy Road and Pac-Man 256 (reviewed on iPad here).  In the game, a mad scientist creates mutant minion creatures and tests them to see if they are worthy of being his minions by making them run through obstacle-filled rooms.  These rooms resemble 2-D challenges from other platformers and mobile games.  Survive as long as you can to boost your score and collect coins so you can make new minions and build new rooms for them to ‘play’ in!

In the game you control the minion critters as they run from room to room.  These minions are silly mutant creatures like a cat inside a cat, a headless monkey, a rabbit turtle, etc.  You only have to tap on the touch screen to make the minion jump, fly, swim, or whatever action that particular room has you do.  Each obstacle-filled room only lasts about 5 to 10 seconds.  Many of the rooms remind me of things you do in other 2-D platformers like Donkey Kong Country.  There’s a mine cart level and a level where you shoot out of moving cannon barrels, for instance.  Other challenges remind me of other mobile title offerings.  There is one section that’s just like Flappy Bird, for example.

Scattered through the levels are coins.  You also earn coins at the end of your run, and when you complete missions (like other cell phone games, you get three missions to do things like jump a certain number of times in a level or whatever).  When you have enough coins, you can make new minions.  Minions need to rest after a room run, but once you have enough, you won’t ever worry about having to wait for a minion to rest.  Some of them have special skills, but I really didn’t notice a difference in the characters besides appearance.  You also earn a score at the end of each run, and when it accumulates high enough, you’ll get to build a new room to challenge in your run of other random rooms.  And of course, the rooms get progressively harder as you play.

While the game is free, you don’t have to wait at all to play.  And while you have the option to view ads to earn more coins, they never force it upon you, so that’s good.  Really the only freebie problem I had is that you have to wait too long for new missions to pop up.  But the free-to-play aspects aren’t what ruins the game.  Rooms of Doom plays very choppy, which isn’t good for this type of precision platforming.  Also, every time I played, the game would always crash on me.  I do like the blocky graphics that the makers of Crossy Road are known for, though.

Kid Factor:

Violence is very cartoony.  You can get squashed by hammers, zapped by jellyfish, and eaten by piranhas until you are nothing left but bones.  But after a rest, your critters are good as new.  So it’s really only like a Looney Tunes show.  Reading skill is helpful for the text, and parental supervision is recommended for the ads and in-game purchases.

Tags: Game Reviews