Save Room [Xbox]

Developed by Fractal Projects, Save Room is an inventory management game where you must fit all your weaponry, ammo and health items into a limited space. Inspired by Resident Evil 4’s inventory system, where you have an attaché case with a specific block-based space available, with a variety of guns as well as various health-replenishing items such as herbs that you’ll need to rotate and consider carefully in order to fit them all in. The levels grow in complexity as you progress, with bulkier guns and new items to have to try and squeeze into the available slots, with some being able to be combined to maximise your usage of space, such as refilling ammo into guns or eating eggs and fish to heal (or even combining various herbs into health vials).

There’s not a whole lot to say about the visuals of Save Room, aside from that it nails the old school Resident Evil style look it is aiming for. The moody soundtrack is similarly Resi-styled, and whilst it isn’t very varied in this aspect - with seemingly only one long, looping track - it perfectly fits the vibe the game is going for. This inspiration permeates every single aspect of the game, not just the overall appearance. You can examine items for additional information, which lets you know useful stuff like what type of ammo is required, or if an item is edible or not - and some inedible items can actually be eaten to decrease your health, in order for you to replenish health again to make extra space.

Items have distinct appearances, with clear colours that help to distinguish items and gently nudge you in the right direction for certain tasks. Machine gun ammo comes in a blue box, and the Blue Gun Powder bottles can be combined to create machine gun ammo. Likewise for the 9mm ammo, this requires 2x Red Gun Powder, and the boxed ammo comes in a red box. This isn’t always the case mind you, as some will require other mixes such as revolver ammo (in a orangey yellow box) requiring a Red/Green Gun Powder combo. Item limits will turn green once achieved, such as fully refilling ammo, or stacking ammo into a single box for ease of storage - so a white number can sometimes be a hint that more ammo can be used or that items can be combined to save on space.

Overall, Save Room is a fun little puzzle game to get your brain juices flowing - and even moreso if you’re a fan of Resident Evil, as it’s a quirky nod to the series. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time to complete given that there are only 40 levels in total, but priced at £4.99 on Xbox, it’s still a relatively cheap title. It would be nice to see the developers come back and add new levels later, as some form of replayability would massively benefit the game. As it stands it still provides a decent experience and has a variety of levels ranging from simple to more challenging levels that require things to be completed in a particular order to optimise your space, and this all combines to make it a great wee budget title.

In the end, we decided to give Save Room the Collecting Asylum rating of 8/10.

Are you interested in Save Room? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!

- V x

Thank you to Ratalaika for the Save Room Xbox review code!