Unpacking (2021)

Muutot on aina ihan per.. sanonko mistä, mutta Unpacking pelissä siitäkin on saatu mielenkiintoista ja jännittävää. Pelissä purat uudelleen ja uudelleen tavaroitasi laatikoista erilaisiin huoneisiin ja taloihin. Pelissä on kevyttä puzzleilua ja eri esineiden löytäminen omille paikoilleen voi olla joskus hankalaakin. Se mikä tekee pelistä mieleenpainuvan, on sen tarinankerronta. Jokainen muutto on aina oma elämänvaiheensa ja on mielenkiintoista seurata purettavien esineiden kautta tarinan päähenkilön elämää. Samat esineet toistuu vuodesta toiseen, välillä esineiden joukosta bongailee oikeastakin maailmasta tuttuja pelejä tai muita esineitä.

Isot talot useine huoneineen menevät välillä hieman sekavaksi ja hankalaksi, mutta silti peli maistui loppuun asti erittäin hyvin. Grafiikat ovat mielenkiintoiset ja audiomaailmasta ei ole valitettavaa.

Peli on enemmänkin interaktiivinen kokemus kuin ihan perinteinen peli, mutta toimii tälläisenä pikku kliksutteluna todella hyvin.

Hyvä 3/5

I love the premise of this game, organising someone's house? Count me in! The art also looked adorable, so I decided to give it a go, since it is on gamepass (at least at time of writing it is)

Narrative

You play either as yourself, or the main character of this game, who is never explicitly named, but probably some geeky girl, going by the stuff you have to unpack. It's how you interpret it. Are you some overlord creepily organising someones house, or are you doing it as the main character. Who knows. The story unfolds as you move house several times. Some stuff you keep, some you don't. The type of house you move into kind of gives away in what part of life the character is. The stuff tells about this person's character a little bit. It's pretty well done how it tells a story just with those two things.

Gameplay

This is sort of a puzzle game. You get a limited space, and several items to fit in it. Some items are restricted to certain rooms, or even certain parts of a room. You can only fit limited amounts in bookcases for example. The point is figuring out a way to nicely put everything everywhere. If you succeed you move on to the next house/level. It's not really a hard game. You probably won't struggle with it, unless you don't understand what an object is supposed to be, which did happen to me a few times.

Setting

It's set in several houses, I believe in Australia. It range from student rooms, to apartments, to whole houses for you to furnish.

Other

Nothing much to add. Except handcramps. This game gave me handcramps.

Conclusion

It was a pretty interesting game to play. Fun concept to tell a story by someones crap basically as they move from place to place, and through life. The artstyle was cute, the music was cute as well (maybe not memorable, besides the end credits song). I liked organising somebodies house. It was not really challenging though. I know it doesn't need to be but it would have helped. The story in itself is not super interesting to me. It's honestly not so special. So harder puzzles would have helped. Next I want a game where you get to pack the boxed. Cause girl, don't put your grill in with your clothes.

So much potential but it just falls short in my opinion. It's too short and not much happens. I was expecting a more interesting story but it was very basic. Such an amazing story could be told through this but I think they wasted the idea. I was gonna go back and get all the stickers but now I don't think I will.

Some details were nice, like the rainbow colored socks that suddenly appeared, or when you had to hide the photo with her boyfriend after they clearly broke up in order to continue. This game needed more of that. I guess I would have cared more the game if I got chances to get attached to the characters. It's just a shame I think, because the concept is amazing.