Video Game Review - TEN -Ten Rooms, Ten Seconds

Rob reviews TEN - Ten Rooms, Ten Seconds on Xbox Series X...

Under normal circumstances, ten seconds isn't a lot of time. However when you're trapped in a room with various degrees of death heading your way - ten seconds can last a lifetime. 

TEN -Ten Rooms, Ten Seconds is the latest game to be released from the indie publisher, Ratalaika Games. Tasked with venturing through an unnamed facility, players have to survive for ten seconds within ten rooms of increasing difficulty. To put it into context, I had an easier time playing through Dark Souls 3 as the deprived class...

As the title suggests, this is a game all about survival. Each floor is made up of ten rooms, each room has its built-in death trap which simply asks you to survive for ten seconds. With each floor completed, the challenge gets harder. As such you'll have to rely on your platforming skills, and patience, and have a bit of luck to succeed. 

To aid you on the journey, the playable character is quite a nimble pixilated fellow. Although only can jump, "Steven" - as I called him - is only as good as the person at the controls. Aside from a couple of extra lives, you don't get many fancy gizmos or skills to help you. Jumping and dodging are the keys to success and anything red will kill you. To mix things up, some rooms have bombs that need to be defused, and the final room on each floor features a thirty-second boss encounter.

While TEN -Ten Rooms, Ten Seconds IS out to punish you, it's a satisfying challenge nonetheless. Running out of life sends you crashing back to the beginning of the current floor. However, the key here is learning from repetition. Potentially playing the same floor time, and time again doesn't get tedious, and it's very rewarding when you finally beat THAT room. 

To keep the journey feeling fresh, each floor features an overall theme. This style will then bleed over to the types of danger that you'll face - for example; fire or water. Each floor also features a sort-of safe room where you'll often encounter another survivor in which some of the narratives are pieced together. 

These safe havens also act as a shop where you can spend your hard-fought coins on useful upgrades to (hopefully) give you an easier time. There's a surprising level of forwarding management evolved here as the game doesn't grant you enough coins to buy everything, which then opens up for plenty of replayability. 

For those looking for an even greater challenge, TEN - Ten Rooms, Ten Seconds keeps track of your overall time and deaths in real-time, with an overall grade given to you once the game is complete. Cheekily, you're also encouraged to do better next time. While overall time didn't bother me, I know a few people who would be competitive enough to attempt speed runs or an infamous "zero death" run. 

Overall TEN - Ten Rooms, Ten Seconds is a great game that certainly gets the adrenaline flowing. Straight from the first room, you know what your getting, and the game doesn't deviate from being a challenging platformer that likes to test your patience and dexterity. 

Rating: 7/10

TEN - Ten Rooms, Ten Seconds is available now and can be purchased via the Microsoft Store.

A code was kindly provided for this review.

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