Palindrome Syndrome: Escape Room

Genre: First-Person Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: Included in Escape Room Bundle, along with Tested On Humans: Escape Room, Between Time: Escape Room, and Regular Factory: Escape Room. Also, it is included in the Escape Room Pentalogy Bundle along with all of the above named games as well as Mystic Academy and Regular Factory.)

Palindrome Syndrome is a First-Person Puzzle game released on PC in 2020 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2021. Much as the game’s subtitle indicates, this game recreates the sort of experience that one would expect from a real-life escape room, with players needing to solve a series of logic puzzles, requiring them to not only figure out the answer to these puzzles, but first figure out the logic behind each of them.

Unlike an actual escape room, players will need to solve the puzzles alone, they won’t have friends or an event organizer to look to for assistance. They also won’t be given any sort of time limit. However, unlike most escape rooms, Palindrome Syndrome has a better capacity to simulate a sort of real-world scenario where this sort of situation could maybe-sorta’ plausibly happen – players wake up with amnesia in a biomedical research facility cryogenic chamber, and seem to have their actions commented on by a mysterious voice on a speaker. A part of this game’s mystery will not only be solving the puzzles to gain access to more of the facility, but also learning who you are and what is going on.

The presentation here is mostly good, with some decent lighting and textures. There’s nothing truly impressive going on here, and the framerates can chug at times, but it works well enough to present a somewhat realistic-looking environment. The voices here are okay, although the low-pitched voice over the speaker seems almost comical in how sinister it’s trying to sound at times. This game generally isn’t aiming for a tone of horror in any case – the game’s areas are well-lit and non-threatening (although there do seem to be alarming blood spatters and cryptic messages scrawled all over the place), and the gameplay is backed by placid, calming music.

As for the gameplay… well, this is about what you’d expect from an escape room, all right. Each of the puzzles exists within its own sort of logic, and half of the challenge is figuring out that logic. Some of these puzzles will undoubtedly seem exceedingly easy, while others just won’t make any sense until you really think about it… or consult a guide online. Yeah, the lack of an in-game hint system is a bit disappointing, and often you’ll be gated from proceeding until you complete a specific puzzle. If you get stuck, you won’t be able to do anything until you figure out the puzzle you’re working on, or look it up online.

Unfortunately, the cursor speed here is a bit on the slow side, and there’s no touchscreen support, adding just a bit of tedium into the process of working on this game’s puzzles. However, this gripe aside, it all functions well enough. The game even warns you when you are trying to work on a puzzle without yet having all of its pieces.

Overall, I think Palindrome Syndrome will likely satisfy those who are looking for exactly the sort of experience it seeks to deliver – a videogame version of an escape room. It doesn’t do anything truly revolutionary for the genre, and has some annoying flaws, but if you approach it with a fair amount of patience (and perhaps an online guide), you will likely find it lives up to your expectations.

tl;dr – Palindrome Syndrome is a First-Person Puzzle game that aims to recreate the experience of an escape room, and it largely succeeds, with this game featuring a theme that has players waking up in a biomedical research lab trying to regain their memory and figure out what’s going on. It’s not without its flaws, and the lack of any sort of help function means that players who get stuck may have to resort to seeking out an online guide, but overall this game is worth a look for Puzzle fans looking for a videogame version of an escape room experience.

Grade: C+

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