New House smell – Unpacking Review
Developer: Witch Beam | Platform: PS5 | Playtime: 3:40 | Platinum: 3:50
Depending on who you ask, Unpacking is either a nice Zen game or easy Gamerscore/an easy Platinum. Luckily I was in the mood for both (The road to 100 Platinum’s wasn’t built on the back of the 80 hour sagas that’s for sure). The game is definitely both the two aforementioned things, but it’s also got a rather nice little story about life hidden in the scenes.
Each of the games 9 levels operates the same, your job is to simply unpack items and place them within the spaces. The levels start easy with just a bedroom, but get harder with the addition of more rooms like Bathrooms and kitchens, eventually leading to a full house. There is no inventory, so when you empty the boxes that house the items you must place, you have to find a space for them within the scene. This does get a little annoying on larger levels where a box in the kitchen might also have items for the bedroom, living room and more. The items are mostly obvious enough that you’re not going to mistake an alarm clock for something in the bathroom, but having to move things item by item to their respective rooms before then finding the correct spot is a little tedious.
“Correct spot” is something else worth bringing up. The game is easy going with how it allows you to place items – as long as the item is in the correct room and vaguely the right place (ie not on the floor) then you pass. The game operates with an invisible grid system so the items can be placed near perfectly to your liking, complete with rotations and some items having orientation changing (laying books flat or standing up for example). That being said, once every item is placed you can finish the level. Not a single level went past without the game faulting some of my placements, requiring them to be moved before progression. This does take the Zen out of the game slightly since it’s less about placing things where you like and more where the game approves. Some of the things it kicked up a fuss about seem really pedantic too, for example I leave my shower towel on my bed when I’m not using it. Fair enough that might not be a common thing but it’s not like I was leaving it on the kitchen table or something. A solution might have been a points or race mode independent of the campaign where you do have to be more precise, but I suppose that takes away from the Zen nature too, there’s not really a good compromise here. If the player wants to ruin their experience by throwing random items wherever they want, they should be allowed. The current system makes the game sometimes feel like a puzzle without instruction.
They’re just minor complaints really since the core concept and execution of the game is very solid. Each level also features a secret little challenge you can do such as putting a certain two teddies together or making sure all of the coffee brewing equipment is on the same bench. Little things like this add to the game, but it’s the story – told entirely visually (save for one or two lines of written text which are mostly flavour about the level you just did) that is the real star here.
Throughout the things you unpack, you’ll see events unfold from 19NN to 20NN and learn the story of a Jewish girl discovering her talents and passion as an artist as well her sexuality. It’s quite a touching and well told story despite occurring entirely in subtle visual form, nice for the people who notice and follow along.
I started off the review by boiling Unpacking down to either a Trophy game or a Zen game, and while it is definitely both, and not without annoyances, it’s a charming little game with a lot of heart that permeates through the cracks.
