But it’s still your old room, even with some of your old posters on the wall. It’s changed a little your cabin-style bed replaced with a standard single, for instance. Then comes the moment when you surprisingly find yourself back in your childhood bedroom. It’s up to us to create a space for ourselves, moving their stuff to make way for ours.
Their apartment is already full with their worldly possessions. No chapter is quite so telling as the mid-point of the game, where our protagonist is moving in with – who we assume to be – a romantic partner. It’s no mean feat, and Unpacking captures it beautifully. Having to squeeze in your belongings alongside someone else’s making a home feel like yours even though you’re not the only person living there. It’s a usual trajectory that many of us might have taken and as such can empathise with. From a childhood bedroom to a university dorm room, to a house share with friends. Whether it be the teddy bear that travels from home to home, or the art supplies that gradually increase as the years go on each and every item you unpack helps us paint a picture of the person whose life we’re in charge of unpacking.Īs do the locations you’re in. You only see where they live, and their stuff.īut how the items you find yourself rifling through can tell a story is nothing short of genius. There’s no dialogue and, aside from a photograph of the back of their head at the end of the game you never even see the game’s “protagonist”. At the heart of the game is a narrative told only through items and the location you’re in. It’s far more enjoyable than a game about taking stuff out of boxes has any right to be, and that’s testament to just how incredibly clever the team at Witch Beam is.īecause, really, there’s so much more to Unpacking than, well, unpacking. In fact, Unpacking might be one of the most chilled-out games we’ve played in recent years. Unpacking replicates this process, but in a way that never becomes arduous or stressful. The older you get and the more stuff you accumulate, however, the more arduous a task it becomes. And again upon moving into my university dorm, having “my very own space” for the first time in my life was a thrill. I remember taking great glee in finding just the right space for everything when I moved into a new bedroom aged nine. Unpacking your stuff isn’t always stressful, granted. But not in Unpacking, the gloriously relaxing – and surprisingly emotive – game from Witch Beam. Only once did I find one very strict object causing me not to pass the level: a bathroom mat I'd placed vertically but needed to be horizontal.The act of unpacking all of your belongings when you move house is undoubtedly something that fills us all with dread. Sometimes you'll unpack something in the bathroom that belongs in the living room, and you can place it anywhere in that room to succeed other times, some items need to be in a rough location, like a shelf. My salt & pepper shakers on the floor, for example, required to be moved every time. When you've unpacked the last box in the house - each level usually adds a new room, or at least a bigger room - any objects in strictly the wrong room or location will need to be relocated. I did a mixture of placing big heavy things like toasters in kitchens in locations and moving all the small things like salt & pepper shakers to the floor until I put everything else to play around with them last. However you want to play the game: you can probably can. I spent way too long piecing together what each one was supposed to be and special shoutouts to the Jaws cover, though - that one was easy.Īlthough Unpacking is a puzzle game, it neither punishes mistakes nor has a precise answer for each level that'll leave you frustrated or confused about what to do next. Each of the small pixel items, from the cute potted plants to the Blu-ray collection, feels hand-crafted, and not a single thing feels like it was thrown in to fill the game. Small changes like these are just touching the surface of the minute details and lengths that developer Witch Beam has gone to fully breathe life into a character and make their life feel real and lovingly crafted. The Gameboy look-a-like was placed neatly on the bedside table in 1998, but in the mid-2000's it's a Nintendo DS. A CRT monitor and a CD-ROM taking desktop will turn into an LCD screen and a laptop. Starting in their childhood bedroom through to adulthood, you'll see the same stuffed toy or books make the journey through several houses just as new items are added to the mix as you jump ahead several years later. Each of Unpacking's eight levels have you playing as the same unnamed character who'll you'll get to learn about through their possessions.