Crimson Room

Crimson Room begins with a brief monologue in which the player clicks to advance the text displayed on-screen. The player character narrates their experience waking up, saying they had drunk too much last night and realising the bed they were sleeping in is not theirs and the room they awoke in is one unfamiliar to them. They question if they are in a hotel room, then deny it and conclude that they are trapped in the room and must escape.{{cite news |last=Saylor |first=Kevin |title=Mixed Media: Web Watch |url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/mixed-media-web-watch/docview/393588075/se-2 |date=17 September 2004 |newspaper=Knoxville News Sentinel |access-date=21 May 2025 |via=ProQuest}}{{cite book |last=Hall |first=L. E. |title=Planning Your Escape: Strategy Secrets to Make You an Escape Room Superstar |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Planning_Your_Escape/XhQ3EAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22planning%20your%20escape%22%20%22crimson%20room%22&pg=PA99&printsec=frontcover |publisher=Simon & Schuster |date=3 August 2021 |pages=97-99, 107, 110-113 |isbn=978-1-9821-4034-2 |access-date=20 May 2025 |via=Google Books}} This plot is cursory and is not relevant to the remainder of the game beyond providing a scenario to introduce the player to the room.{{cite thesis |last=Fernández-Vara |first=Clara |title=The tribulations of adventure games: integrating story into simulation through performance |url=https://repository.gatech.edu/entities/publication/88622c9d-6ecc-4ecb-a359-e4487938d1cc |date=December 2009 |degree=PhD |publisher=Georgia Institute of Technology |access-date=21 May 2025}}

The room is then shown to the player, with a crimson red ceiling and crimson walls, and the player may click on the screen to get out of the bed, allowing them to begin interacting with the room. The room is presented from a first-person perspective as a three-dimensional space, where it can be explored and interacted with in the style of a typical point-and-click adventure game. The player initially sees a door with a doorknob, and a desk, which has drawers and has a bowl and a stereo on top of it. They may investigate or attempt to interact with the objects they see in the room by clicking on them. Clicking on the door will tell the player that "It is a strong door", and clicking on the doorknob will reveal that "The knob does not turn". They may look at the room from different fixed camera angles by clicking on the edges of the screen to move their field of view towards that area of the screen. They may also see a closer perspective of specific objects by clicking on them, or reveal new, hidden angles of the room by clicking on certain areas of it. For example, the player must click a particular space near the edge of a mattress to then see the area between the bed and the wall.{{cite video game |title=Crimson Room |developer=Toshimitsu Takagi |publisher=TAKAGISM |date=4 March 2004}}{{cite journal |last1=Shepherd |first1=Ifan D. H. |last2=Bleasdale-Shepherd |first2=Iestyn D. |title=The design-by-adaptation approach to universal access: learning from videogame technology |date=August 2011 |journal=Universal Access in the Information Society |volume=10 |issue=3 |pages=324, 327 |doi=10.1007/s10209-010-0204-x}}{{cite journal |editor-last1=Fernández-Vara |editor-first1=Clara |editor-last2=Fay |editor-first2=Ira |title=A Descriptive Schema for Escape Games |date=21 November 2024 |journal=Well Played |pages=4, 10, 11 |volume=10 |issue=1 |doi=10.17613/zk65x-t9b08}}

Some objects found in the room are items which are collected when clicked and are added to the inventory of the player. The pillow on the bed in the room lifts up when clicked, revealing a golden key underneath, which the player can collect. The player can then select the key they collected from the inventory section of the interface, and click on a previously-locked drawer in the room to use the key on the drawer and unlock it, allowing them to open it and find a power cord inside, another item the player can collect. The power cord can be used on the stereo on top of the desk to power it, letting the player click on the stereo's power button to turn it on. Eventually, after solving every puzzle in the room, the player is able to collect a screwdriver and use it on the doorknob of the locked door, which lets them escape, completing the game.

Viridian Room, Blue Chamber, and White Chamber all follow the same basic format as Crimson Room, but feature new rooms and puzzles to be solved. The Nintendo DS version of Crimson Room lets players choose to play any of the aforementioned four games, and allows players to save their progress in the rooms so they can leave the game and resume it later. Players navigate the room by using the touchscreen to tap on specific areas of the room to search them or interact with objects, just as the mouse is used in the online version. The game's puzzles were changed only as necessary to allow the game to be played on the handheld console and without using the internet — a notepad in the original release of Crimson Room which showed a web address for players to visit was replaced with an in-game PDA in the Nintendo DS version. The PlayStation Portable release Crimson Room Reverse uses the console's analog stick in place of a physical mouse, and features eight games total: the original four games in the series, and modified 'Reverse' versions of each game.

At the time of its release, Crimson Room was praised and considered an innovative work. Peter Cohen, writing for Macworld in 2005, called the game a "remarkable piece of work" that tested the limits of the Adobe Flash platform.{{cite magazine |last=Cohen |first=Peter |title=Online Distraction {{!}} Crimson Room |url=https://archive.org/details/MacWorld0508August2005/page/n45/mode/2up |magazine=Macworld |date=August 2005 |page=45 |access-date=20 May 2025 |via=Internet Archive}} Matt Frilingos of The Daily Telegraph emphasised its quality, and said that the time of players would be filled well trying to solve its puzzles.{{cite news |last=Frilingos |first=Matt |title=Big game hunter - Hit the net for the best desk-bound diversions |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A114298525/GPS?u=ncnc&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=12ff984a |url-access=subscription |date=17 March 2004 |work=The Daily Telegraph |page=S19 |access-date=20 May 2025 |via=Gale OneFile}} A 2010 article for The Kathmandu Post considered the game "exemplary" and intellectually challenging, judging it in value alongside other online games such as Quake Live and FarmVille.{{cite news |title=The best the web has |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A222858089/GPS?u=ncnc&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=a031cc88 |url-access=subscription |date=1 April 2020 |newspaper=The Kathmandu Post |access-date=20 May 2025 |via=Gale OneFile}} Some later commentary, however, has focused on the game's short length and unintuitive puzzle-solving. An article written for Siliconera in 2007 deemed Crimson Room a "glorified pixel hunt" and said it would likely take players only an hour or less to beat even without using a walkthrough. It also noted the game's "bad English".{{cite news |title=Crimson Room: From flash to DS |url=https://www.siliconera.com/crimson-room-from-flash-to-ds/ |date=5 October 2007 |website=Siliconera |access-date=19 May 2025}} Steven T. Wright, writing in 2019, noted that the game may fail to "hold up to modern tastes", featuring "tedious pixel-sniping" and some questionable logic, but argued that its appeal lies not in its gameplay but in its atmosphere and sense of mystique.{{cite magazine |last=Wright |first=Steven T. |title=Out of the Box: The return of the escape room |url=https://archive.org/details/Wireframe16/page/n21/mode/2up |issue=16 |page=22-24 |date=20 June 2019 |magazine=Wireframe |access-date=20 May 2025 |via=Internet Archive}} Another Siliconera article, evaluating the Nintendo DS collection of Crimson Room and its three successors, argues that while the games are interesting, they lack replay value and have too little content to merit purchasing a paid copy for the console when the games are available for free online.

{{See also|Escape room video game|Escape room#History}}

The original Crimson Room is often cited as originating the 'escape the room' genre, although MOTAS, which was influential in its own right, predates it by a few years.{{cite news |last=Zenko |first=Darren |title=For lots of gamers, escapism means starting out in a trap |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/for-lots-of-gamers-escapism-means-starting-out-in-a-trap/article_89ea054c-59ff-572b-bbb0-278fff6c476d.html |date=20 January 2018 |newspaper=Toronto Star |access-date=20 May 2025}} (Crimson Room's credits list MOTAS, Droom, and Chasm, all prior Flash games, as inspiration.) Regardless, the game is a seminal work which popularised the genre, especially in Japan, received 800 million views online, and inspired hundreds of other games like it. As well as its sequels and ports, it received a novelisation written by Takagi which was published in 2008.{{cite book |last=Takagi |first=Toshimitsu |script-title=ja:クリムゾン・ルーム |title=Crimson Room |date=10 April 2008 |language=ja |publisher=Sunmark Publishing |isbn=978-4-7631-9823-5}}

Crimson Room has often been noted as influential on real-world escape rooms and an inspiration for their creation.{{cite news |last=Suellentrop |first=Chris |title=In Escape Rooms, Video Games Meet Real Life |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/arts/video-games/in-escape-rooms-video-games-meet-real-life.html |date=3 June 2014 |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=20 May 2025}}{{cite book |last=Kroski |first=Ellyssa |title=Escape Rooms and Other Immersive Experiences in the Library |pages=4-5 |url=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tHCADwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PA5&dq=%22The%20first%20escape%20room%2C%20the%20Real%20Escape%20Game%22&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q=%22The%20first%20escape%20room,%20the%20Real%20Escape%20Game%22&f=false |isbn=978-0-8389-1767-1 |date=2019 |publisher=American Library Association |access-date=20 May 2025 |via=Google Books}}{{cite magazine |last=Miller |first=Stuart |title=The Art of the Escape Room |url=https://www.newsweek.com/2015/05/01/art-escape-room-323150.html |date=19 April 2015 |work=Newsweek |access-date=19 May 2025 |quote=After being born as point-and-click computer games like Crimson Room, the live version began in Japan in 2007, spread throughout Asia and reached Eastern Europe by about 2011, becoming especially popular in Budapest, Hungary.}} The game in particular, as well as the trend of online 'escape the room' games in Japan that it sparked, has been said to have incited the creation of the first real escape room event hosted by Japanese magazine SCRAP. The event was a pioneer in real-world escape rooms and is generally considered to have been the first example of a physical escape room in the world.{{cite magazine |last=Long |first=Hannah |title=Great Escapes |url=https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/magazine/1902240/great-escapes/ |date=14 December 2018 |magazine=Washington Examiner |quote=The most direct digital ancestor of today’s escape rooms are the point-and-click escape games programmed in Flash in the early 2000s. One such game—Crimson Room—inspired Takao Kato to create what is generally credited as the first physical escape room, in Kyoto, Japan. |access-date=20 May 2025}}{{cite news |last=Sugar |first=Rachel |title=The great escape |url=https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/8/7/20749177/escape-room-game |date=7 August 2019 |website=Vox |access-date=20 May 2025}} The magazine's founder, Takao Kato, took interest in a conversation with a friend about escape the room Flash games, which inspired him to publish an article about them and plan and host a real game to tie-in with the article, as SCRAP normally hosted events that thematically related to its articles. He later wrote that playing Crimson Room specifically was itself what first led him to create his original Real Escape Game, saying it inspired him through being perfectly "logical, simple, and stimulating".{{cite web |last=Kato |first=Takao |title=ABOUT {{!}} REGAME |url=http://regame.jp/en/about/ |url-status=dead |website=Real Escape Game Online |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140104222515/http://regame.jp/en/about/ |archive-date=4 January 2014}} Kato's concept was very successful and led to the fast expansion of Real Escape Game, now a leading brand of escape room events. Furthermore, the term 'Takagism', which came from the name of Crimson Room's developer Toshimitsu Takagi and was the brand he used for his works, then became used in Japan to refer to escape room video games as a whole, is now used in China to refer to real-world escape rooms, as they were known to have been inspired by or 'adapted from' Takagism games. For example, one of the first groups hosting escape rooms in China, founded in 2012, was known in English as the Beijing Takagism Club.{{cite news |last=Wenwen |first=Xu |title='Big Bang' gamers need sharp wits to escape from real rooms |url=http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/print.asp?id=495355 |newspaper=Shanghai Daily |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130106171935/http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/print.asp?id=495355 |archive-date=6 January 2013 |access-date=19 May 2025}}{{cite news |title=Real-Life 'Room Escape' Trend Spreads Across China |url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/room-escape-china_n_3977282 |date=24 September 2013 |website=The Huffington Post |access-date=19 May 2025}}{{cite news |last=Ran |first=Yu |title=Takagism gains popularity in Shanghai |url=https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2014-11/28/content_18994546.htm |date=28 November 2014 |website=China Daily |access-date=19 May 2025}}

{{reflist}}

Category:2004 video games

Category:Adventure games

Category:Browser games

Category:First-person adventure games

Category:Flash games

Category:Indie games

Category:Puzzle video games

Category:Point-and-click adventure games

Category:Single-player online games

Category:Video games developed in Japan