Escape room games are some of my favorite on the PSVR. And one of the more recent ones, 18 Floors, developed by Aoga Tech and Published by Winking Entertainment, was controversial in the VR community. In some descriptions and websites, the game claimed to have 18 floors. But in reality it was only 2, this was fixed quickly but VR players were upset..But we’ve just received two more levels in the form of free DLC. So I thought it would be a good time to review the game, here’s hoping they’ll eventually add the rest of the floors. So, is 18 floors with it’s new DLC any good?
18 floors is a VR escape room game that has you going from floor to floor solving puzzles. The games story isn’t really found inside of the game, it’s only really explained in the games description on the playstation store. Which talks about an ancient being that’s been hidden among the humans for centuries. So story is definitely not a focus for this game.
Once you start the game, you’ll find yourself inside of an elevator with 18 buttons representing the floors. Like I said, there are currently only 4 but this could change in the future. After pressing a button you are greeted with a floor. Each of these floors are drastically different and share almost no similarities. One floor takes place in the middle of the ocean, while another is inside of a mansion. The variety is pretty good in this game.
But what about the puzzles themselves? A lot of the puzzles are really well designed and different than anything i’ve played before. But while a lot of them are well designed, they’re way too hard to figure out. Mainly due to the hints making no sense, or even worse, some of the puzzles or items don’t have any hints at all. Which just leads to stumbling around mindlessly looking for something. For example, in floor two I needed an item to continue. And to find it you had to move an object that isn’t normally movable. And there is no hint whatsoever telling you how to find this item.
The only floor that I found was not too easy and not too hard was the first floor. I only had to look up one part, and that part ended up making sense, I was just looking at it from the wrong angle. For that first floor I actually really enjoyed the game, but as I proceeded to the next three floors, it got worse and worse. The further I proceeded the more I had to look up the answers to the puzzles. It’s just unfair how these puzzles are set up, which is a shame because it ruins the fun from some of the well designed puzzles.
On top of that there is also no locomotion options. It’s teleportation only. Which I didn’t really mind for this game, as most of the floors take place in small areas. The games tracking also isn’t very good, I got a lot of controller drift while playing.
So overall 18 floors is just ok. I really enjoyed myself in the first floor, but as soon as I played the other floors, it was much worse. There are a lot of good puzzles that are tarnished by the lack of hints and logic. And at it’s current state, I just can’t recommend it. If the developers could add a difficulty setting or some hint system, I think it would make the game a lot better.
