SH 1, 2, and 3 are tough acts to follow, and I can see why the negatives of this game were so overblown next to the positives back on release. I think this game is a wonderful piece of deliberate design on the misery of self isolation, and a lot of the "bad" design helps the story along in a proto Ice Pick Lodge sort of way, but for every intentful and narrative piece of game design here, there's another that just kind of drags down the pacing. The Room is notably longer than any previous SH but it accomplishes that largely through combat rooms and backtracking. This backtracking feels especially disjointed with the lack of an overworld, which I feel like could have actually done a lot for the birthing metaphor at play here, if the physical space of the world was a challenge to get around (am I just begging for Pathologic SH? Mayyyyybe).

In spite of all of this, The Room is maybe the best piece of game storytelling the series ever pulled off, the inferential nature of the Henry and Walter characters proving wonderful as their stories progress and the holes grow more gaping and painful. Just wish they'd had more time