The Room: Old Sins

Fireproof Games built its reputation on turning phones and tablets into puzzle boxes, and The Room: Old Sins, released in January 2018, might be the best demonstration of that skill yet. The fourth game in the series centers on a Victorian-era dollhouse discovered in the attic of Waldegrave Manor, where an engineer and his wife have mysteriously vanished. Players explore miniature rooms inside the dollhouse, manipulating objects, uncovering hidden mechanisms, and using the series’ signature eyepiece to reveal secrets invisible to the ordinary eye.

Community reception has been remarkably consistent over the years. User ratings sit near perfect marks across both major mobile storefronts, and the game picked up BAFTA nominations in the British Game and Mobile Game categories. The praise tends to circle around the same handful of strengths: gorgeous visuals, clever puzzles, and an atmosphere thick enough to cut with a knife. Criticism exists, but it’s narrow and predictable. Most of it boils down to “I wanted more.”

The Puzzle Design That Hook You in The Room: Old Sins

Puzzle design is the centerpiece, and Fireproof delivered something special with the dollhouse format. Rather than moving through a linear series of rooms, players explore multiple interconnected spaces where solving something in the kitchen might unlock progress in the study across the hall. An object discovered in one room might be the key to a mechanism in a completely different one. This interconnected approach creates a satisfying loop of discovery, backtracking, and sudden understanding when scattered clues click into place.

Visual quality deserves its own conversation. From a distance, the dollhouse looks like a detailed miniature, but zooming into any room reveals photorealistic textures on wood, metal, and stone. Every drawer, every lever, every hidden compartment is rendered with a level of care that makes the act of exploration feel rewarding even before you solve anything. That level of visual care is rare on any platform, let alone mobile.

Atmosphere ties everything together. The soundtrack leans into low, ominous tones punctuated by creaking wood and distant whispers. Stereo sound design creates a genuine sense of place, and the lighting shifts as you move between rooms, casting shadows that make the dollhouse feel alive in an unsettling way. The whole package lands somewhere between Victorian gothic and cosmic horror without ever tipping into camp.

Touch controls remain a series strength. Sliding panels, turning keys, spinning dials, and peeling back layers of hidden mechanisms all feel natural on a touchscreen. The interface gets out of the way and lets the puzzles breathe. A built-in hint system offers gentle nudges after a set period of inactivity, with no penalty for using it, which keeps frustration from ever derailing the experience.

Credit also goes to the business model. This is a premium game with no ads, no in-app purchases, and no subscription. You pay once, you get everything. In a mobile market saturated with monetization traps, that simplicity is worth calling out.

Where The Room: Old Sins Drops the Ball

Length is the most common complaint, and it’s fair. Most players report finishing Old Sins in four to six hours, and there’s no additional content, no branching paths, and limited reason to replay. For a paid game, the value proposition still works, but players coming off longer experiences may feel the credits roll just as things are picking up speed.

Difficulty represents a real step down from the series’ peak. Fans who came from The Room Three, which featured more complex multi-location puzzles and layered solutions, often find Old Sins comparatively breezy. The interconnected dollhouse rooms add structural complexity, but individual puzzles tend to resolve faster and with fewer steps than the series’ hardest moments. Players looking for a stiff challenge will likely clear most rooms without reaching for the hint button.

Narrative is the weakest element. A story about the Null, a mysterious substance that warps reality, and the fate of the manor’s former occupants plays out through scattered notes and environmental clues. Most players report finding these notes forgettable, with the overarching plot difficult to follow, especially for anyone who hasn’t played the previous three games. Old Sins doesn’t do much to expand the series mythology in a satisfying way, and the storytelling ends up feeling like connective tissue between puzzles rather than a compelling reason to keep going.

Some players also note that the game’s quality tapers slightly toward the end. Early rooms like the study and the kitchen feature intricate, multi-layered puzzles, while later spaces feel less developed by comparison. A few rooms end abruptly, as if the designers ran out of ideas or budget before they ran out of square footage.

A Dollhouse Worth Getting Lost In

What matters most about Old Sins is what the dollhouse structure does for the series. Previous Room games were essentially sequences of puzzle boxes. You solved one, moved to the next. Old Sins turns the entire game into a single, sprawling puzzle box with rooms as its compartments. Progress in one area feeds into another. Items found in the kitchen might unlock something in the maritime room. The result is a game that feels less like a series of challenges and more like a place you’re learning to understand.

That shift from linear to interconnected is what elevates Old Sins above a simple sequel. It gives the game a sense of cohesion that the earlier entries, as good as they were, couldn’t quite achieve. And it makes the dollhouse itself feel like the real puzzle, with each room serving as one piece of something larger.

Should You Download The Room: Old Sins?

Anyone who enjoys puzzle games on mobile should play this. Fans of the series already know what they’re getting, and Old Sins delivers the atmosphere and tactile puzzle-solving that made the franchise famous. Newcomers can jump in without playing earlier entries, though some story references will fly past them. It’s also an excellent pick for anyone tired of free-to-play mechanics and looking for a polished, self-contained experience they can finish over a weekend.

Skip it if you need your puzzle games to last dozens of hours or if you demand a difficulty level that regularly stumps you. Old Sins prioritizes atmosphere and flow over raw challenge, and it won’t apologize for that.

The Verdict on The Room: Old Sins

The Room: Old Sins is the fourth entry in one of mobile gaming’s most respected puzzle series, and it earns that reputation all over again. The dollhouse structure is a brilliant organizing principle, the puzzles are creative and satisfying, and the atmosphere pulls you in from the first moment. It runs about five hours and the story won’t win any awards, but the craft on display here is so consistent that those complaints barely register. If you’ve ever wanted proof that premium mobile games can stand alongside anything on any platform, this is it.