“A place for everything, and everything in its place,” is the unspoken motto of A Little to the Left. It’s a game full of slots that have been perfectly sized for the right object to fit in, be it a battery or a button. Colour-coordinated bookshelves and leaves with perfectly matching holes await in what is surely an organization nerd’s dream. Every level requires you to place objects so they slot together in a satisfying way, whether it’s by carefully sorting them or creating symmetrical designs. Yet it’s also a game about letting go of that desire for perfection and accepting a bit of chaos, in this case taking the form of a mischievous cat who loves to mess with your meticulous patterns. It’s an interesting dichotomy, one which saw me cursing the wretched feline to high heaven at the outset, but then gradually warming up to it by the end. It’s an odd puzzler, in that it causes reflection as much on the solution being undone as it does on the steps taken to complete it. I think it’s for the best, though, as it kept me consistently engaged and enjoying my time with it from start to finish.
Tag: Logic
Tiny Garden Review
I never got into the Polly Pocket craze as a kid, due in no small part to a fairly strict adherence to gender stereotypes. That being said, I don’t recall them ever entering our household, even in the hands of my older sister. There were several Barbies and similar toys, but Polly Pockets seem to have passed us by. However, even now I find the concept to be pretty fun: a portable capsule toy that contains a customizable world within, featuring furniture, toys, and of course, little dolls. It provides all the necessary features of a dollhouse, without the large space and financial commitment inherent in one, easing the burden on parents wanting to provide a way for their child to play house or other activities.
The Muddled Politics of Technotopia
Sometimes you play a game and can tell right away that it’s going to give you Thoughts™, but that wasn’t the case with Technotopia. My time with it started out the same as any other game, doing my best to get absorbed into the world it crafted and gameplay mechanisms it implemented, all the while taking notes on the side to prepare for the inevitable review. And then things changed. The narrative beats slowly began to go off the rails and I went from raising an eyebrow occasionally to having one permanently cocked. Futurist stories have the capacity to hold up a mirror to our current world or speculate on what tomorrow may bring, and yet Technotopia frequently feels like it gets so lost in critiquing what’s happening now that it forgets to provide that extra layer of futuristic abstraction. This is less satire, and more someone stating their beliefs directly to the player. And let me say, some of those beliefs are … questionable to say the least.
Olive's Game Garden 