Thanks to SimDevs for sending us a review copy!

Area 86 is an escape room game that has you faffing about with its physics objects to solve various puzzles and escape the room. It’s a short but focused experience that will bring a wry smile to your face.

The game takes place aboard a space station where artificial intelligence is being researched. A strange glowing orange ball pops out of the vent shaft into a room where a funny little robot is being tested, setting the game in motion. There’s no story of note here though, other than being a robot trying to complete puzzles to head to the next room.

The controls are fairly simple. You can move about, pick up and throw objects, and activate objects. There are also controls to bring down a list of objectives, and to lock the direction you are facing. The objectives list informs you what needs to be done to escape each room with a helpful thumbnail and description, and then leaves you to bumble around. There’s a mix of platforming, finding keys, and puzzle solving, so the game is constantly switching gears and never gets boring while you’re solving things. To further help you, notes are strewn about the levels diegetically as chalk markings and wall posters, providing plenty of notes and hints for completing all of the objectives. The camera shows what’s happening from a fixed angle, like a fourth wall in a theatre.

I say puzzle solving, but with the amount of clues provided, there’s very little mystery to how each objective is meant to be done. The real difficultly comes with the application of physics to all the objects, because there is no way to easily rotate items besides throwing them against an edge and hoping they roll over in the correct way. Heavier objects simply can’t be picked up, so it’s a matter of ramming into them repeatedly to budge them over ever so slowly until the clues they were hiding become visible. This lack of precision and convenience can be frustrating, but if games like Surgeon Simulator or Goat Simulator have taught us anything, it’s that there’s a humorous charm to trying to perform precise actions with inaccurate interfaces.

The graphics are simple but very endearing. It’s very cute how the little robot accelerates around the rooms with a silliness that’s evocative of WALL-E, despite the complete lack of animation. It’s also clear that the sound effects have had quite a bit of attention, as every object has its own clangs and thuds as you hurl it around. The playful curiosity of the soundtrack perfectly suits the game, and keeps things nice and calm.

It does have to be mentioned that there are only 6 levels in this game. After the tutorial level, each level will keep you experimenting for around 30 minutes each, but this is a game that can easily be finished in a single afternoon. The Steam forums show that SimDevs originally intended to add a few more levels shortly after release, but at this point it seems safe to say that this is all there ever will be. I also experienced a bug, with my little robot falling through the floor, forcing me to restart the level.

There are negligible moral concerns to be had here. Your little robot will be crashing through glass and breaking things, but all the property damage is a silly and charming side effect of not being able to control things accurately as you bump and crash around the place. It’s very easy to treat this as an abstract lab with no owners who would get upset over damaged equipment.

Area 86 is basically an abandoned Early Access title in its current state. There’s still some squeaky clean fun to be had here as you fumble about, but definitely wait for a sale.