The House of Da Vinci VR Review

If you like escape rooms, you’ll undoubtedly have heard of The Room, a series of slick mobile titles from Fireproof Games spanning all the way back to 2012. Four years ago, they released The Room VR, which took everything great (and some not so great) about the series and transposed it to VR. The House of Da Vinci by Blue Brain Games has had a similar roadmap — three mobile instalments and now a remake of the first game for your PC headset. Would the Master approve? 

I’ll be honest: out of the two IPs, I generally preferred The Room. The games felt more polished and the challenges more varied. However, the story of Da Vinci was a bit more interesting than just a nameless figure randomly solving puzzles, and its VR offering does a great job of Immersing you in a fully realised world, replete with candlelit crypts, spooky courtyards and fabulous 16th century architecture.

The crux of the plot is that Da Vinci summoned you to his workshop to discuss an important discovery, but then disappeared before you arrived. Luckily, he left a load of clues and puzzles lying around for you to solve in order to try and find the tech and keep it out of the hands of the Borgias.

You’re introduced to the controls in a gentle manner, which is necessary since you’re not going to be swiping on a tablet or phone but using your actual hands to manipulate objects in the environment. Moving around is the standard point-to-point VR teleportation found in umpteen similar games and it works fine. Each area has a number of different viewpoints — four to six on average — which shift as you complete puzzles in a room. While it’s a shame you can’t fully explore the luxuriously designed backdrops, the atmosphere is sufficient to give you a flavour without resorting to the queasy navigation that other games such as Rooms of Realities chucked in. 

Early on, you’re given a device on each hand. One activates an X-ray mode which lets you see and interact with the inner workings of some machines, as well as spot clues painted in the environment like the gaming equivalent of UV paint. The other device lets you follow the footsteps of Da Vinci himself, rewinding and fast forwarding time to see what he might have done in a particular room to progress. You might see him activate specific switches or hidden panels on a wall, or daubing a clue onto a statue. Essentially, there are usually three steps to solving any given puzzle: first, see if it can be interacted with in "normal" vision; second, check if you have an item in your possession that can help; and, if all else fails, switch to X-ray vision to see if you're missing anything.

Generally, you’ll only have one or two items in your possession at any point. Some of them need to be examined or fiddled with to alter their form into a usable object (a key, a crank and so on). Some need to be combined to make new items. In each case, these will be highlighted red in your inventory. You’ll only use items in the chapter they’re found, so it’s guaranteed that they’ll be required somewhere not long after you collect them.

The puzzles have translated well to VR from their mobile origins. In many instances, they have been entirely redesigned to streamline the experience, which means even if you’ve played the original, there will still be new things to discover in this remake. Amongst other brainteasers, you’ll find patterns to align, objects to put in order, mazes to navigate, maths equations to solve and connections to complete. If you’re stuck, a layered hint system is available. The first hint will tell you where you need to move to next in your location. Subsequent hints either give you a pointer to which part of a puzzle to look at and what to do (for instance, use an object on them), or the actual answer in the case of more complex problems.

Most of the puzzles are logical, but there were a couple which didn’t seem obvious at all, even when the game provided the answer. One was a maths problem which didn’t follow the BODMAS order. The other was a symbol-hunting puzzle in the final chapter where I’d clearly missed the location of specific symbols needed to proceed; returning to each symbol’s alleged location to see if I could spot what I’d missed proved fruitless. Other players may have more astute eyes. 

My bigger grievance was with some elements of the control system. Though selecting items can be done reasonably easily by first selecting an item with a controller button and then using the trigger to grab it, there are too many instances of dial-based puzzles which require you to use a single digit to cycle through numbers. The hand icon spasms between a pointer and an open palm, rather than locking into place to let you select the option you want, meaning you’ll have to painstakingly move or rotate your hand millimetres at a time. The same occurs with some items that need switches to be flicked on them. Given this finicky manipulation was one of the biggest problems in the original game, it’s surprising it hasn’t been fixed for this remake, especially since effective use of your hands is pivotal to the game’s completion. 

That said, the majority of The House of Da Vinci is an enjoyable, if familiar, ride. Being able to solve puzzles up close within the confines of the various locations provides a layer of immersion which is unachievable outside of VR, and this remains the hardware’s greatest strength. The advantage this game has over A Dark Matter, the VR instalment of The Room, is its length. It clocks in at around four hours: around four times longer, which isn’t to be sniffed at in a format where you’re usually feeling short-changed when the credits roll. 

If you’re looking for plot, scrolls provide story exposition and detail the ongoing feud between Da Vinci and the Borgias. Don’t expect a Game of Thrones epic, but it’s functional enough to provide a reason for your actions in helping. The ending shouldn’t be a surprise since there are already two non-VR sequels — hopefully this experience will be successful enough for Blue Brain Games to work on converting the follow-ups. In the meantime though, I’ll continue to hope for a VR version of Boxes: Lost Fragments.