18 Floors

18 Floors begins with the kind of VR hook that is hard to resist: you are sealed into a strange place and have to make sense of the objects around you before the room lets you go. Its puzzles connect across numerous rooms rather than living as isolated brainteasers, so the satisfying moments come when an earlier detail suddenly becomes useful somewhere else.

Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

18 Floors puts you in first-person VR escape rooms and asks you to work your way out by solving interconnected puzzles. That simple setup is the right fit for VR. Instead of pushing you toward action or combat, it wants you to slow down, look around, and build a mental map of what matters in each sealed space.

The strongest part is the way its rooms can make a clue feel incomplete at first. You are not just clearing one small challenge and moving immediately to the next. Progress depends on noticing how spaces and puzzle elements relate, which gives a successful solution a pleasing sense of discovery rather than the feeling of merely checking off a task.

Frustration can set in if you prefer constant forward momentum. Escape-room logic asks for patience, and the game’s modest amount of content means there is not much room for a slow stretch to be offset by a large adventure afterward. Go in ready to poke at the details and think laterally, not expecting an all-night VR campaign.

Graphics

The two settings give the game its most memorable imagery: a Renaissance room and an old railroad train crossing the ocean. That contrast lets the adventure move from enclosed old-world interiors to a much stranger journey at sea, while Chinese folklore references add flavor to the spaces.

Story

This is an atmosphere-first escape story. You are trapped in sealed rooms, and the immediate dramatic question is straightforward: what do these places want from you, and how do you get out?

Chinese cultural references help give the mystery a specific character without turning the game into a folklore exam. You do not need prior knowledge to engage with the puzzles, which is a smart choice for a game built around observation and problem-solving.

Do not come looking for a sprawling narrative or a cast-driven adventure. The settings and the act of escaping do the storytelling, and the game is more interested in sustaining curiosity from room to room than delivering a big plot payoff.

Overall Experience

At its best, 18 Floors captures the intimate pleasure of a physical escape room: you are alone with a strange environment, a handful of unanswered questions, and the conviction that the answer is already somewhere nearby. The unusual train-over-the-ocean setting helps it stand apart from a generic sequence of locked chambers.

Its biggest problem is expectation management created by its own name. There are only two levels here, albeit with numerous rooms, so the experience ends before it can feel like the eighteen-stage journey some buyers may reasonably anticipate.

Still, the concentrated format has its upside. If you own PSVR and want a brief, thoughtful puzzle outing with a couple of distinctive locations, 18 Floors is worth considering. For more background on the original release, the official original game information is useful. Just treat it as a compact pair of escape scenarios, and it is easier to appreciate what it actually delivers.