I fear getting stuck in an elevator. Specifically, the leftmost elevator that takes me down from the parking garage to the sub level where my workstation is located. It seems every time I get in (when it’s actually working) it groans with unholy malice. So, imagine my delight when I popped into Turbo Button’s quirky one and done elevator escape puzzle game, Floor Plan for PSVR. It makes getting stuck in an elevator fun! Put that quote on a box!
Using a Move controller as a hand, a second one works for the symmetry but is redundant, the player chooses a floor by pressing numbered buttons. Each floor has a different and easy to digest theme or gimmick including one where the floor is literally lava which should delight the young children in your life who aren’t allowed to play until they’re over twelve years old. These windows into other worlds are populated with strange anthropomorphic creatures like a hungry piggy bank, a snowman afraid of melting or a grabby gunslinger that present a challenge to the player that often requires visiting other floors and retrieving items to solve.
For example, if you see a sad plant that doesn’t like coffee, chances are there’s something else it’ll want to drink – but it’s not as simple as grabbing a mug and filling it with water. Many of the solutions involve the ways in which the floors connect to one another. Solving a puzzle on a higher floor changes the situation on a lower floor and vice versa. Experimenting and discovering what these relationships are and how they work is where Floor Plan shines. While none of the puzzles will keep you up all night, a couple of the later ones were quite the little brain ticklers and one of them even had me scratching my head for longer than I care to admit. If you do get stuck, you can always call up the in-game phone operator for a hint.
The controls in Floor Plan just work. Flawlessly. Rather than have players retrieve objects by reaching forward in three dimensional space, the hands in the game act as de facto laser pointers that warp items into your possession. Grabbed items can then be stored in the elevator four at a time for use on different floors. However, they cannot be combined and you’ll rarely have more than two at once. This does limit the types of puzzles available to those of a very basic point n’ click variety. A physics based puzzle game this is not. That’s really the only other issue plaguing Floor Plan. Despite running on a system that urges you not to let children play, its simple, colorful graphics, and easy to understand mechanics make it the perfect starter escape room for the younger set and play slightly immature for anyone older than middle school. You won’t find any winking and nudging like in Job Simulator or festering rot filled bowls like in Resident Evil VII’s Banned Footage DLC, for instance.
IN CONCLUSION
For five bucks (less if you buy it on sale) Floor Plan is an hours worth of budget priced mental jumping jacks and charming vistas that should be a nice palate cleanser before your next meaty VR experience. Thanks to my time hopping floors and torturing googly-eyed jackhammers, I now look forward to getting trapped in the elevator at work and solving all those whacky puzzles that result from a lack of oxygen getting to my brain.
You’ll note that this game did not receive a review score. We feel that because of its shorter nature and low cost, a numerical score could not accurately reflect the value of the experience and might create unnecessary expectations for the reader. Suffice to say, for those who enjoy puzzle games, it’s recommended.
Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.
