BOXROOM Preview

If you love playing videogames, I am sure you have wanted to have your own gaming space to chill and do your own thing. Or if you collect physical games, a good space to display your collection and collectibles would be ideal. BOXROOM is very different from anything else I've ever played; here you are creating your own gaming sanctuary by designing and decorating a room to show off your Steam game collection. 

Before playing, make sure you have all your Steam profile settings on Public and not Private as the game can't access the games in your library if it's set to the latter. As soon as the game starts, you begin making the hard decisions by selecting the style and type of furniture you want in your room. 

We are given three different catalogues to select from the Boxco Company: a 1995 Catalogue, a DIY Catalogue, and a Corporate Catalogue. All the booklets have a huge variety of shelving, bookcases, desks, and appliances like a microwave or coffee maker. There were surprising additions like a guitar, an amp, and skateboards.

When you are flipping through the books, notice that some of the products have a bird logo. That means that you can put game art from a game you are currently holding on to. For instance, you can make your own custom bedding or posters to decorate your walls.

The DIY Catalogue is where you find boxes that can hold your whole game collection. The games can be in no particular order, be alphabetical, or be based on the amount of time you have played them. Man, I'm going to have so many with no playtime…

There are 15 colours of paint available to use on your walls; they all have great videogame-themed names like Fire Flower, Save State Peach, or Arcade Grape. It's going to be tricky to pick just one, so I may make every wall a different colour, or if you desire, you can paint alternating stripes of colour. BOXROOM gives you so much flexibility to do what you want.

If you decide you would rather go with wallpaper, there are a variety of different patterns to put up in your room, and it is way easier than in real life! Once you have the walls prepped, you can go crazy hanging shelves on the wall or placing bookcases to hold your collection or installing your choice of hardwood or carpet flooring. 

I started to place furniture around this time; in the catalogues, you find options for sofas, a beanbag chair, desks, and even bunk beds! The super cool thing is that since the comforter on the bed has the bird logo, you are able to use screenshots or box art from your favourite games as the pattern. The same goes for an area rug if you decide to put one down.

BOXROOM looks nice, and the furniture is exactly like the stuff we had back in the ‘90s, even the old and smaller CRT television! My favourite thing is being able to display art from the games in my Steam collection; it made the room feel just like something I would design. Plus, it makes me want to redecorate my game room at my house!

I have been playing BOXROOM on both my PC and the Steam Deck using controllers and the keyboard and mouse. Control-wise, it works pretty well, but it can be tricky to get the furniture, like a bookcase, exactly where you want to place it, and once it's there, you basically need to delete it and put a new one down. I found it hard to move an existing one, so it was faster to do this. 

 

BOXROOM is a room creation game that you really need to play. It's so cool how it can access your own Steam library to make it feel incredibly personal, plus it's cool seeing your digital game in its case with a 3.5-inch floppy disc. 

There were a couple weird bugs that I encountered. Like objects changing size when you place them (the coffee maker was larger than the table it was sitting on) or turning furniture, only letting you rotate in one direction, but neither made me want to stop playing.

Try out BOXROOM and see what kind of gameroom you can create, or maybe you can plan out the space you want in real life. Plus, you can also boot up any of the games you own from your in-game copy in your room; it’s so cool!