Synopsis:
Unpacking is a zen puzzle game about the familiar experience of pulling possessions out of boxes and fitting them into a new home. Part block-fitting puzzle, part home decoration, you are invited to create a satisfying living space while learning clues about the life you’re unpacking.
Publisher: Humble Games
Reviewed on: PC (Ryzen 5 2600, RTX 2070 Super, 32GB DDR4)
Also available for: Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, macOS
Developer: Witch Beam
Creative Director: Wren Brier
Technical Director: Tim Dawson
Audio Director, Music & Sound Design: Jeff van Dyck
Pixel Art: Angus Doolan, Wren Brier, Michelle Whitehead (mmsishee), Joseph-Paul Silipo (h3xmode)
Do you remember the first time you moved into a new home? For myself, it was when I was around ten years old, and my parents moved from one side of the city to the other. I remember the lead-up of attending houses to view and discussing the place we would move into a month later. There was a bedroom tucked away in a corner with a zigzaggy corner which I claimed as my own. As a kid, it feels super-exciting, but as a teenager, or an adult, moving adds a new stipulation on top of the excitement: packing and then unpacking your belongings. This process is what Unpacking is all about, down to the fine details of having to find new homes for items that fit perfectly in your old place.
And just like in real life, there’s never enough cupboards in the kitchen
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. 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. A CRT monitor and a CD-ROM taking desktop will turn into an LCD screen and a laptop. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Building a narrative for a character you neither interact with as a player nor see and making that engaging is a monstrous task. However, it is one that Witch Beam achieves with flying colours, and it’s honestly one of the most insane things about Unpacking. On each level, I’d find myself nodding and muttering “oh good, we kept this” while placing the same pink mug on a kitchen shelf, while also fighting against fashion decisions — “this shirt, it’s terrible! Why’d we buy it?”
It had me wondering about my own life, and if someone was to play a game unpacking my belongings each time I’d moved, would they have been able to tell the small details and changes in my life, interests and romances? The Bam Margera poster, Jackass DVDs, and skateboards I owned were swapped out for a much more extensive cinephile DVD collection alongside an increase in video games and comics at some stage.
Unpacking hits such emotional highs with small moments, you won’t see them coming. You never know what items will come out of one of the boxes next, and each tells a small story of its own. There’s a sense of love for life within each level here as well. The game made me want to pack up my things and move for the sensation of new-beginning given to you at every stage of your life.
At the end of each level, you can save a GIF timelapse of how you completed a room in that particular level which is super cool!
Although 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. However you want to play the game: you can probably can. 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. 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. My salt & pepper shakers on the floor, for example, required to be moved every time. 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. 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.
Finishing Unpacking, I felt a profound sense of attachment to the character I’d come to learn so much about and the ending of the game felt like such a great pay-off. Unpacking is truly a unique game that has done something no other video game has done before by crafting such a tremendously relatable character out of nothing but the rather mundaneness of unpacking boxes. I’ve played games with thousands of words of text that haven’t invested me in the journey of a character as much as some simple belongings did. Without a doubt, Unpacking is one of the best games of 2021, but it’s also one of the most original and well-designed things I’ve played in years.
(Unpacking code provided for review)
