Doors: Paradox is an escape-the-room puzzle game with a gorgeous art style and some decent ideas. It’s never super tough, but it offers just about the right amount of challenge to keep you engaged in short, mobile-sized bursts.
The game sees you swiping and poking your way around a series of levels. You need to find objects, stick them where they’re supposed to go, twist cranks and pull levers and manipulate the little worlds in order to open a door. Go through the door, you’re on to the next level.
The levels all have their own distinctive style. You might be on a pirate island, flying through space on an intergalactic postal machine or figuring out how to get past some guard statues on the ethereal plane.
Each of the challenges takes about five minutes to complete. Once you’ve found the first object, things flow quite nicely. You’ll move from little puzzle to little puzzle, slotting things back together or pulling them apart until the door swings open and off you go.
There are gems to find that unlock other levels, or you can buy an IAP to unlock everything in one fell swoop. The puzzling here is enticing but simple – you’ll rarely feel backed into a corner, and when things do get tough there’s a hint system to help you out.
Doors: Paradox might not have the chops of genre heavyweights like The Room, but it’s aiming for a more casual audience. This is a game that thinks in minutes instead of hours, moving along at a decent pace and never resting on its laurels for too long.
It might not have the staying power of some games, then, but Doors: Paradox is still a solid enough experience that it’s well worth your time. It lets you slip some head-scratching fun into those moments of down time where you’re reaching for your phone – and it does it really well.
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