Video Game / The Room: Old Sins

Break the Seal. Find the Null.

Travellers are easy prey, seduced by the mysteries of a new world. The seal is nearly broken, but is my journey ending, or am I but one more naive traveller?

-H

The Room: Old Sins is a spinoff of the mobile puzzle game series The Room, released on 25th January 2018 on iOS, 19th April 2018 on Android, and rereleased for PC on February 11th, 2021. You play again as a Featureless Protagonist different from the previous one, only known as 'H'. You are sent by mysterious employers to investigate the disappearances of high society couple Edward and Abigail Lockwood at their home of Waldegrave Manor. The game then starts you at the manor's attic, where a mechanical dollhouse based off of the manor lies. By using your eyepiece you can peer into the dollhouse and interact with it as if it is a full-sized house. From there it is up to you to solve the mystery of the couple's disappearance and to retrieve whatever artifacts they had been hiding. Including, and especially, the Null.

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This game provides examples of:

• Abandoned Area: Waldegrave Manor. It's up to you to work out what happened to its inhabitants. Well, kind of.
• Alien Geometries Some of the puzzles feature them.
• All There in the Manual: Each room contains a diary entry from one of the Lockwoods which gives insight to their lives. Do you need to read it to progress through the game? Nah...
• And I Must Scream: Being trapped in his own house was not a pleasant experience for Edward.
• Animal Motifs: Objects and diary entries associated with Abigail often use a swan motif, while Edward's motif is that of a stag. H's briefcase displays a serpent motif when it's opened at the end hinting at his allegiance, as the Circle's ritual chamber features snake imagery in its liquid-Null fountains.
• Apocalyptic Log: The diary entries between Abigail and Edward chart Edward's descent into madness, which you can find in several corrupted books throughout the dollhouse. Unlocking a book adds a new entry to the other ones.
• Artifact of Death: Unless you are very, very careful, Null exposure is guaranteed to lead to a slow and painful death.
• Ascended Extra: "The Circle", a mysterious group of occult-interested individuals, mentioned only briefly by A.S. in the original game, take center stage in this game; they are the ones who end up (inadvertently) setting the events of the game in motion, and the player ultimately turns out to be one of their agents.
• Big Fancy House: Waldegrave Manor. Highlights include a Maritime Room, a Curiosity Room, and a Japanese Gallery.
• Call-Back: Several events from the original trilogy are referenced:
  • Your character is back exploring the attic, just like in the first game.
  • The ship Rose from the second game is seen in a puzzle in the Maritime Room, and clues there imply that Lockwood's Null sample was originally salvaged from the ship's sunken wreckage by his late father-in-law. The ship's figurehead lifted from the wreckage in the submarine is the same one from the original ship.
  • The marble maze holograms in the Curiosity Room show Professor de Montfaucon's tower laboratory, a steppe-pyramid, and a galleon, all locations in The Room Two.
  • Tentacles devouring the dollhouse mirrors the fate of AS's house in the second game and Grey Holm in two endings of the third game.
  • The Talisman company also makes floodlights. Who knew?
  • The mannequin's right arm in the Curiosity Room is the same mechanical arm one from a puzzle in the third game.
  • Abigail's drawings of the various apparatus Edward received from the Circle can be found on a chair in the Curiosity Room, among them is a drawing of the Null-harnessing device from the very first game.
• Clock Punk: The game's aesthetics.
• Creator Cameo: All the books found around the house feature the names of various Fireproof Games employees.
• Creepy Dollhouse: Crossing over with Alien Geometries, the protagonist investigates a couple's disappearance by looking into a dollhouse resembling the very house it's in. You can zoom into a room using the eyepiece, and can be interacted with as if it were a full-size house.
• Cue the Sun: Almost all of the game happens at night until the very end.
• Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: Downplayed. Curiosity is part of the reason why Edward Lockwood ended up in the Circle's trap
  H: The room is closed, but only just; true evidence that one's curiosity can be one's undoing
• Dramatic Thunder: During the introduction of the game
• Easter Egg:
  • Playing with the radio in the Maritime Room will reveal some of H’s backstory as revealed by members of the Circle, at 57, 66, and 84.
  • Deliberately idling around the very straightforward final area which just involves placing an item will bring up the Hints, but they instead detail Hydrus' thoughts about just running away with the Null sample rather than giving it to The Circle like he was sent to do.
• Eerie Anatomy Model: The Curiosity Room holds one, and several puzzles center on it.
• Escape from the Crazy Place: Abigail ran away from the manor when the Null started to devour it.
• Foreign Culture Fetish: As seen in the Curiosity Room and the Japanese Gallery.
• Foreshadowing:
  • If you are quick enough, you will be able to see the final dollhouse alongside the corpse of Edward illuminated by the lightening flash when you first enter the game.
  • "Everyone has secrets. Mine just happens to be hidden in this box." This is referring not just to H's eyepiece but also that he is sent by The Circle to collect the Null crystals made from Edward's soul.
  • H's movements whenever he completes a room appear too casual for a person who's inexperienced with the things related to the Null, and at the beginning, he brings his briefcase with him. This is another hint about who he is and his occupation.
• Generation Xerox: Downplayed. Both Hugo (the father) and Abigail (the daughter) Waldegrave are clever people whose lives are implied to be ruined by contact of the Null, but in different ways.
• Genius Loci: The dollhouse seems to have a mind of its own, such as replacing all the contents of books with thoughts of its occupants.
  Edward: I have read a book about me reading a book I am reading.
• Gentleman Adventurer: Hugo Waldegrave, Abigail's father.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: Your Eyepiece exposes hidden information and allows you to go into tiny spaces.
• Happily Married: The Lockwoods. Zig-zagged in that Edward's research into the Null strains their marriage, but their love never wavers.
• Impoverished Patrician: Abigail inherited a large manor...and a whole lot of debt. The desire to restore his wife's fortunes is what made Edward dabble with the Null in the first place.
• Inkblot Test: Each diary entry is accompanied with silhouettes done in this style.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The golden dragon sculptures in the Japanese Gallery.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: Edward to Abigail.
  Edward: If you find a way out do not hesitate to take it. Do not wait for me. Do not look back.
• Leitmotif: An ominous version of the original trilogy's theme song plays when an artefact is found.
• Lightning Reveal: This is how you get your first glimpse of the dollhouse as well as Edward's corpse when you first enter the game.
• Matryoshka Object: The dollhouse's attic contains another dollhouse with another dollhouse in its attic and that dollhouse has another dollhouse. ^note  For those of you that are confused, that is five dollhouses, four of which are found in the previous dollhouse's attic.
• Mineral MacGuffin: The Null. Its dimension bending properties powers a lot of the puzzles and mainly explains why the dollhouse is unexpectedly big.
• Minimalist Cast: The cast consists of just you, a dead man, and an absent woman.
• Museum of the Strange and Unusual: The Curiosity Room is a downplayed version of that, with all sorts of stuff in it such as tribal masks, an anatomical figure, and a cabinet full of crystals.
• Mysterious Employer: In the game, you never find out who sent you. Until you watch the stinger.
• Newspaper Backstory: For Hugo, Edward, and Abigail.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Present in The Stinger.
• Player Inventory: Used to carry items from one room/dimension space of the dollhouse to the outside/another room.
• Pocket Dimension: Using the eyepiece on the dollhouse allows you to go inside it like a regular house.
• Pretentious Latin Motto: The Waldegrave motto is 'Audacia Et Industria' ^note  Boldness and hard work
• Real Is Brown: On PC, the game is noticeable browner than the previous installments.
• Recursive Reality: The dollhouse in the attic is able to replicate the rooms in the actual house. When you unlock the dollhouse's attic, you go through a sequence of dollhouse attics inside other dollhouse attics.
• Shout-Out: The desk in the Study opens in a similar fashion to David Roentgen's Secretary Desk.
• Sequel Hook: The Stinger has left a lot of questions that needs to be answered.
• The Stinger: Which contains some very important information. Namely, the Player Character is a Villain Protagonist.

• Suddenly Speaking: While the series usually doesn't have any voice-acting, the anatomy model puzzle features spoken dialogue for the first time.
• Tentacled Terror: There is a statue of a giant octopus destroying a pagoda in the Japanese room. There are also tentacles slowly destroying the dollhouse.
• Twist Ending: The Player Character is not who you think he is.
• Villain Episode: The Player Character is working for the Circle.
• Wham Shot: Two in rapid succession; the first comes after you break the seal and acquire the Null when you come out of the successive layers of the attic dollhouse. After the final layer, the dollhouse has changed into a perfect copy of A.S.'s home from the first and second games. Then, The Stinger reveals that the Player Character was a member of the Circle the whole time, and they have several concentrated and pure pieces of Null to work with.
• You Wake Up in a Room: Averted. The player and the main character knows full well why they are in the attic. The motivations of both people are not necessarily the same however.