The Locked Room

About The Locked Room

The Locked Room is a psychological horror adventure game from Alexey Sudarikov, released on PC in September 2025. Set in a derelict motel, it blends linear storytelling with survival elements and puzzle-solving. You play as a character with no memory, uncovering their past by piecing together clues and diary entries. The game leans into eerie atmospherics and slow-burn tension, with every decision influencing how the fragmented narrative unfolds. It’s a single-player experience focused on exploration and deduction, designed for players who enjoy methodical gameplay over fast-paced action.

Gameplay

You spend most of your time navigating the motel’s interconnected rooms, searching for items and decoding cryptic journal pages. Puzzles involve rearranging objects, deciphering symbols, and interpreting the diary’s nonlinear entries. Survival mechanics include managing limited resources and avoiding environmental hazards. The controls are mouse-and-keyboard focused, with a first-person perspective that heightens immersion. Each session feels like a slow, deliberate crawl through a decaying space, with the atmosphere shifting based on narrative progress. The game’s tension comes from both the mystery itself and the unsettling, often ambiguous, visual design of the environment.

What Players Think

The PlayPile community rates it 78% user score, with critics averaging 82%. Average playthroughs last 12 hours, but only 37% of players complete it. Moods are split between curiosity (68%) and tension (89%). Review snippets praise the "creeping tension" and "diary system that feels both brilliant and maddeningly slow." Achievement completion is low (24% of players unlock all 15), with many citing pacing issues. Critics highlight the "unconventional storytelling" but note "repetitive puzzle design." The game’s cultish appeal is clear, fans love the mystery, while others find it too deliberate.

PlayPile's Take

The Locked Room is for fans of slow-burn, cerebral horror who don’t mind a 20-hour grind for a modest $29.99. While its puzzles occasionally lag and the story’s ambiguity may frustrate, the atmospheric design and diary-driven narrative carve a niche worth exploring. Skip if you crave action or instant clarity. For $30, it’s a risk but a rewarding one for the right audience.

Storyline

You’ve lost your memory and don’t remember who you are or how you ended up here. But there’s one desire: to survive. Memory recovery is the key to the mystery, and it happens through the pages of a personal diary, where forgotten fragments of your story slowly come together. But what if these entries hide not only the answers, but also what you fear to discover?