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There are no time limits, giving players a chance to explore the rooms they're unpacking and experiment with where they place things. The end result is a puzzle game with low stakes, but that feels like it truly builds. Unpacking art supplies tells the player something about this protagonist, and the shared spaces move from minimalist and pristine into charmingly cluttered with personality. The spaces themselves tell a coming-of-age story of changing relationships, while the unpacked objects spell out interests and priorities. But the organization mechanic is embedded into an overarching narrative as the player unpacks a bedroom, then a dorm room, then a series of apartments. This basic gameplay of arranging clutter and creating order out of chaos is the main mechanic of Unpacking, and it would be fun enough on its own.
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RELATED: How The Last Stand: Aftermath Effectively Blends Narrative With Roguelite Gameplay Leaving a backpack on the ground prevents the player from moving on until a better home is found for the object. The basic gameplay is simple, with items selected one at a time from the boxes and placed on shelves or in closets until nothing remains to be organized. Players are given a room and a series of boxes to unpack and arrange throughout the room. Its focus on doing one thing well allows Unpacking to shine as a beacon of approachable play, and the joyful, nostalgiac aesthetic makes each moment of play fun. Unpacking succeeds at both elements, taking a simple, real-world process and turning it into a meditation on change using one straightforward mechanic. The real gems are those games that can take one mechanic and use it to bring the player into the world and tell a story without undue complexity.
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An overload of mechanics can keep gameplay feeling novel but often forces a game to succumb to overwhelming complexity to do so.
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