This puzzle game is Resident Evil 4 inventory Tetris

New puzzle game Save Room is, unashamedly, Resident Evil 4’s inventory management spun off into a separate game. And why not! I’ve certainly enjoyed rotating guns around grids and cramming eggs into crevices, and you lot even decided that inventory Tetris is better than fishing minigames. For less than two quid, yeah, I’ve been happy with this one.

Save Room basically is just Resident Evil 4’s inventory Tetris, only on irregular grid shapes. Each puzzle gives you an assortment of guns, grenades, bullets, and snacks to cram into a limited space by rotating and rearranging them, as well as using familiar RE4 tricks.

You can combine stacks of ammo boxes, and you can clear more bullet space by cramming them into a gun. If you’re low on health, chugging a handful of eggs both clears space and heals you—though maybe it’d be more space-efficient to eat one of those long fish instead? And of course you can combine red, green, and yellow herbs. Some channel RE7 with crafting ammo, too. And I do appreciate how, in the RE4 tradition, it introduces new models of weapon types with different sizes and ammo capacities to keep you on your toes.

I’m on puzzle 19 of 40 myself and sadly so far haven’t encountered my favorite RE4 inventory Tetris puzzle element: ‘wasting’ space on ammo boxes by keeping a gun unloaded so I can get a full reload for free later when I upgrade its capacity. I don’t know if that’s in this game at all, but I’d be delighted if it is.

Save room is fun. It’s fun enough. I like inventory Tetris and this expands RE4’s decent inventory Tetris into a full puzzle game well enough. It’s not amazing, it doesn’t surprise me, and it doesn’t award me medals for all my hard work rotating ammo boxes to the same orientation (a huge disappointment), but I’ve enjoyed arranging guns and it’s dead cheap.

Save Room is available now onSteamwith a 20% launch discount bringing the price down to £1.35/€1.27/$1.59 until Thursday the 5th of May.

While it doesn’t currently have mouse support, the devs say it’ll come in the next patch. I appreciate the tactical tradition of tapping but yeah, I’ll appreciate that mousing.

If you enjoy inventory Tetris, do also check out the demo for Backpack Hero, a roguelike dungeon crawler that’s all about optimizing your inventory arrangement. It’s good.

Ta to cheery RPS fanzine PC gamers for pointing out this game.