Every room you complete in Unpacking is like tearing open a Kinder Egg and carefully constructing the toy inside. Each new box, each new item you pull out, is a little surprise, a little exquisite treasure. There is care in every line of Unpacking, in the ancient mug that you come to know as The Mug You Always Keep Your Toothbrush In, the way this person's fashion changes a little bit over time, the sound design that sees cutlery jangle when you put it away, or the paper rustle whenever you pick out something new. You imagine how someone else might see your life the same way. And you whoop for joy when you start unpacking one particular room in the last house. And you become so attached to the person who's doing the unpacking that you become excited when things are going well for them, are happy when they move in with people who seem fun, want to bang on the glass when their new flatmate is clearly going to be terrible. You recognise a lot of the places and feelings you see in this game. Unpacking is an incredibly thoughtful, lovely game that is both empathetic and relatable. You can see, in the header, that the artist kept their battered old laptop.Īfter all, being able to engage in play is one of the reasons I like games, and so many games taken themselves so very seriously that I often forget that. An earlier, smaller version of the office in the header image. "These are their favourite shoes, the ones they wear the most, so those always go at the end of the bed here." Or: "They never really use this pan, so that always goes at the back of the cupboard." I felt like Unpacking was inviting me to be playful, and I loved that. But around that, I could start to imagine things about this person myself, and put them in the game. What it feels like to go back to your parents' home and realise you're not part of it anymore. Within that there's some really sophisticated environmental storytelling about who you're living with, and what it feels like to make space for someone in your life versus someone who won't make space for you. They get more art supplies, more expensive drawing tablets. When they leave home and study art, they start watching more movies and playing video games, and you see the ones that are important to them stay with them throught the years. You notice they like travelling, and collect little souvenir models from places they visit. Without any text, Unpacking tells you about person growing up and figuring out who they are, sometimes painfully. What's so wonderful about Unpacking is that while it's telling its own story, it also leaves you space to write a few of your own lines in there as well. It's incredibly, incredibly satisfying, finding a place for everything. Your plates and cutlery have to go in drawers in the kitchen. You can't just leave your clothes in a pile on the bed and think, "I'll get to those later". The rooms and the items are beautiful, detailed and delicate things rendered in pixels, and the puzzle-y challenge is that you must place everything where it is, more or less, supposed to go. After you complete each level it goes in a photo album, and you can rearrange or replay any levels you like from there. These grow more complicated - the first level is just the kid's bedroom, but you eventually have to contend with a two storey house with a separate kitchen, dining and living room, an office, a walk-in wardrobe and more. Each of these levels sees you unpacking possessions from boxes, one at a time, and placing them in a home in isometric cutaway. Unpacking takes you through several landmark house moves for the same person, from their 90s childhood bedroom in their new family home, to their university dorm, a shared house with several roomies, single bed couples' flats, and so on. And comes with the creeping realisation that your life has as much meaning as can be physically stuffed into a few cardboard boxes.Īn extra special high-five, then, to Unpacking, which not only makes this stressful event a delightful puzzle, but also demonstrates that your life and things actually have incredible meaning. And you have to undertake it several times! The packing, the unpacking, the stuffing of old newspaper in gaps between fragile plates: it's all hell. wanting wives) that moving house is one of the worst things to undertake in adult life. It is a truth universally acknowledged (like the status of single men in possession of large fortunes viz. It tells a lovely story without words, leaves you room for interpretation, and invites you to be playful. This compact little puzzle-story-game has care in every line.
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