![]() ![]() It doesn’t sound like there’s much to figure out here in terms of the story. Others shift and change (a new mug in 2004 becomes a chipped toothbrush holder in 2007). Some objects (a soft toy, a sketchbook) go with you all the way from childhood to your university house to your first house share and beyond. As you move on through time (all the way to 2018), you’ll start to notice patterns. Once you’ve finished that room, you’ll move on to the next house. It’s a nostalgia hit for frazzled and overwhelmed millennials, but not in an in-your-face sort of way. You’ll uncover a Tamagotchi, a tape player, a My Little Pony, a Rubik’s Cube. The game opens in 1997, with you unpacking your bedroom. You, as the player, unpack the various houses you have lived in since childhood. There aren’t many of these, but it does help to elongate the game a little bit. You can snap pictures of your finished rooms, decorating them with stickers that you unlock through completing the story, or by following clues (‘Game On’, ‘Tidy Whities’). Once you’ve finished unpacking all the boxes, any items that have not been put away correctly will glow with a red outline until you’ve found the right area for them. There’s a bit of a puzzle element involved. It’s calming, and methodical, and allows you to arrange items exactly how you would like them to be, which is very pleasing if you like things to be neat and orderly. It’s like real-life unpacking, only much more bearable because it involves less physical effort. You click to open a box and click again to remove an item, and then you put it somewhere. The result is absolutely wonderful if you’re looking to calm your mind and simply take joy in a productive task.Unpacking is, in terms of gameplay, exactly as it sounds. That’s where the other magic in the title lies, the reflection on how we grow and change, and to see what special items continue to endure while so many others prove to be disposable. As you progress through the game the scale of your effort continues to grow to multiple rooms as your character’s life progresses to new stages. What makes it so satisfying to organize and perfect a virtual world while more often than not the mess you’re sitting within playing it remains untouched? I don’t think this game has the answers to that conundrum but there’s no mistaking the sense of satisfaction in devising the perfect drawer for putting your socks in, perhaps taking the extra step to also organize them by type or color as you go… just to make them perfect. These activity-based games tied to tasks most people abhor doing in the real world are a bit of a mystery. With Unpacking it’s clear there are other avenues to tap though, at least when the game is laser-focused on a very specific objective… in this case something as simple as unpacking some boxes and carefully organizing their contents. Usually when you think of casual games puzzles and the like are usually what comes to mind, or perhaps something akin to a visual novel. ![]()
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