Unpacking – Alpha Demo

 

Unpacking – Alpha Demo

 

Unpacking is a very satisfying zen puzzle game where you unpack moving boxes and find the correct places for all your stuff.

In Unpacking your character moves into eight new homes over the course of their lives. You’re never explicitly told a story and you never see your character, but you get a sense of who they are and their lives as you unpack the belongings as they move into each house. Each level of the game is a different home that your character is moving into and you need to open the moving boxes and place all the items within them in suitable places. You’re given a little leeway for your own taste in placement, but everything has a rough area that it should go in (clothes go in a wardrobe, books go on a bookshelf or a desk, etc). Once you’ve unpacked all the boxes then anything that’s in the wrong place will flash, indicating that you need to move it somewhere more suitable.

The current build of Unpacking features two playable levels and takes around 20 minutes to play through. It’s a very pleasant experience that sort of gives you a Tetris-esque satisfaction of finding the right place to put things. It’s very easy to get to grips with and finding the right place for objects is fairly intuitive (though the kitchen in the second level requires some good arranging skills).

Aside from shopping in an Ikea, moving house is one of the most stressful experiences of modern life, but Unpacking not only manages to make it fun, but even relaxing. It’s an intuitive and oddly addictive game and there’s a real satisfaction to finding the right place for everything. Even in the two levels of the demo you start to get a feeling of who your character is and their interests, so it’ll be nice to see who things play out as their life progresses. Highly recommended.