
Sotano – Mystery Escape Room Adventure 2021 on a Budget? It’s Not as Hard as You Think
December 4th, 2021
M9 Games
Explore an immersive indoor environment, solving puzzles and collecting items
Use the inventory to collect and use objects
Beautiful all original adventure 3D graphics, environments and atmosphere to explore
Immersive backing soundtrack and effects to pull you into the adventure
Full save system with load slots, manage all controls and sound levels to your preference.
Sotano is an M9 Games first-person 3d escape room puzzle adventure that was released on December 4, 2021, and is similar to games you may have played in the 1990s or virtual escape rooms you may have played. An inventory where you can acquire and use goods found along the way to solve puzzles and escape the rooms, as well as an interior immersive world that you explore.
When you look at your fuel gauge on the way home from the airport, you discover the needle has crossed the red line. You decide to take a little-known shortcut through a quiet village because the shorter journey will save fuel instead of stopping to fill up. “It’ll be great; all I want to do now is get home,” you tell yourself. As you pass by some of the larger ancient houses, the car begins to make unusual noises, and you realize you’ve pushed your luck, coming to a halt in front of one of the street’s largest homes. What a humiliating situation. You decide to swallow your pride and knock on the door for help. “Maybe a house this size might keep fuel for sit on mowers and generators.” You think, hopefully, to yourself. Moments after knocking on the door your world turns black and you find yourself waking up in the basement, reading a note left by the owner: I’m sorry you have found yourself waking up here but you were snooping on my property and I was alerted to your presence. I will be back shortly.
We had a lot of fun with Sotano, and it will really get your little grey cells working. It also helps to have paper and something to write with on hand. The fact that there were no other people around us to connect with, that there was no dialogue, and that there was no storyline after the initial explanation of where we were and how we got there were the things we loved the best in Sotano. Some of the puzzles in Sotano were observation-based, some were riddles, and many required some thought and thinking outside the box to ‘understand’ what the solutions were based on. There isn’t any superfluous clutter, and there isn’t any hand-holding. While we like red herrings and interactive objects that aren’t required to solve the puzzles (like looking at a flower and the petals fall off, or touching a cookie and a bite is taken from it), another game we recently tried had a lot of things you could pick up and examine that had no use or connection to the tasks at hand (for example, scattered papers with vaguely blurred scribbles on them), and there was no easy way to place a needed item. In Sotano, there is a useful inventory where you can keep track of what you need, avoiding excessive lugging and getting bogged down with useless items. There’s also the added bonus of stunning graphics and a fantastic soundtrack.
We did have a couple of glitches in Sotano where the game indicated we were clicking on the number or object next to what we had clicked our cursor on (just reset and repeat it slowly each time until it worked correctly), and one time where we had to save and quit, then return to our saved game to complete another puzzle. But, aside from those two tiny flaws, everything functioned flawlessly, and we had a terrible time tearing ourselves away to do menial tasks like cooking dinner or sleeping. We’re hopeful that the developers will add more chapters to the game or create a sequel so that we can relive the fantastic experience.