Dismembered bodies, venomous plants, and a terrifying, mangled creature can all by found in Oxide Room 104, a new body-horror game developed by Wild Sphere and published by Perp Games. The game follows Matthew as he attempts to escape a decrepit motel after being assaulted upon arrival. There are multiple endings, a variety of challenging puzzles, and collectible documents that can help Matt uncover the truth about the sinister motel he finds himself trapped in.
Oxide Room 104 takes place in the Night Soul Motel, a decaying building with a few sinister mysteries. The Doctor that's running his experiments there captures Matt after luring him there under false pretenses. After the game's opening scene, Matt awakens in a bathtub full of blood with a head injury that's left him weak. As he starts to regain consciousness, he notices his clothes are missing and the door is locked. Once he fully realizes the danger he's in, he anxiously searches for a way out of the motel.
Matt must start by finding the key to the bathroom door, then to the room that he's trapped in. As more room keys are found, Matt can collect files, supplies, additional inventory slots, a gun, and ammunition in Oxide Room 104. Each room presents a unique puzzle, and some require items from others rooms to complete. Items can be stored in rooms that have wooden boxes to increase inventory space while exploring, but putting away things like medical supplies can be risky. When Matt is injured or poisoned, if bandages or an antidote aren't used quickly enough, Matt will die, and he'll have to start over again.
There are different types of enemies in Oxide Room 104 that appear depending on how many times Matt dies and what rooms are being explored. Some can be avoided by crouching and sneaking by, or they can be shot after Matt escapes the first room and gets the gun from the storage area. Ammunition is limited, and the most common creatures take about six bullets to kill, so the gun needs to be used sparingly. Each time Matt dies, he has a brief but horrific interaction with the Doctor, then he wakes up again in the bathroom of Room 104.
At first glance, it may seem that after learning a bit about the motel and its puzzles, subsequent attempts to escape would be easier. However, each time Matt wakes up in the bathtub, the motel changes. Items are in different places, different enemies appear, and healing supplies, like bandages, are gradually limited. Additionally, the Doctor only gives Matt a few extra tries to escape the motel before the worst ending is unlocked and the game resets completely. The core puzzle in each room is the same, but the overall differences applied to the motel call for alternate methods of solving them in later runs, so it keeps the game interesting.
The music, lighting, and atmosphere in Oxide Room 104 convey a sense of urgency to escape and a feeling of dead each time a door is unlocked. However, the fear element is somewhat diminished by Matt's monotone reactions to the monsters that are threatening his life. Even the first time Matt comes across one of the Doctor's mangled experiments, his reaction is underwhelming. Not every interaction Matt has with the creatures in the game's haunted motel is as disappointing, but it's frequent enough that it reduces any sense of immersion. For example, Matt can pass by a room where a woman is screaming for her life, and when he gets close, the door is jostled, then she goes silent. Matt has nothing to say except that the door is locked, then he goes about his business.
Aside from a few strange or seemingly missing reactions from Matt, there are interesting puzzles, a creepy antagonist, and several nightmarish creatures to kill or avoid throughout the game. Being able to choose which rooms to explore helps to create different experiences over multiple runs. Not every key needs to be used before one of the endings is unlocked, so it will likely take a few playthroughs to figure out how everything in the motel is connected and what's inside all of the rooms in Oxide Room 104.
Oxide Room 104 is available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Screen Rant was provided a digital PlayStation 5 download code for the purpose of this review.