The variety of moves also allow you to move into different contexts, which puts an interesting spin on things. I had a lot of fun squinting at the pixelated game cases and figuring out what they were. We even get to see her video game collection evolve through the years. I guess she had those in storage, or back at her childhood home, but now they’re back where they belong. Some items may even disappear for a level or two and then come back, which always brought a grin to my face to see. Collections grow over time, showing us more about what she’s done outside of these moves. The pig stuffed animal you see on the start screen shows up in both the first and last levels, but in very different contexts that speak to where our main character is in her life. Seeing what comes along, especially in the context of a new home, is really moving, and the new environments change how we view those items. Like most of us, the main character of Unpacking often leaves things behind when she moves. It isn’t just the new locations, but also what you’re actually unpacking. Telling its story through the environments is beautifully done. It even manages to pack a few surprising twists into the last few levels, some subtle, others obvious to anyone paying even a little bit of attention. While many of us have likely moved at times just because our lease was up and we didn’t like our place or because the rent was going up and we didn’t want to pay it, a lot of moves are tied to major life events, and that’s how Unpacking tells its story. The start of relationships, the end of those relationships, going off to school, getting your own place for the first time. That said, if you think about the sort of things that cause people to move you’ll be able to place at least a pretty good chunk of what you’ll be going through. By the final level, you’ll be Unpacking a 10 room house, including walk-in closets, offices, and a few other rooms I won’t spoil. By the second level you’ll have three rooms to unpack, with bathrooms and kitchens getting thrown into the mix. Things do get a bit more complex from there, though only in that the breadth of what you’re unpacking. Anyone who has ever spent hours getting their Animal Crossing village just perfect should understand the appeal. It’s relatively simple stuff from a gameplay perspective, though there’s definitely a sort of zen enjoyment to getting everything just right. Fix them or go into the settings and enable the option to put things where you want if you want to make Unpacking more of a tool for creativity than a game, and you’ll move onto the next. As you finish the level, organizing it perfectly to your liking, you’ll be told that certain items might not be in a location that makes sense. You’ll get her toys and books lined up carefully on her shelves, putting them just right. The first level is simple, just that one single room for you to unpack. We aren’t given a specific age but based on what the second level represents, she’s probably around 11. You start out in her childhood bedroom, surrounded by toys. Over eight levels we see a significant portion of this young woman’s life, spanning 21 years. Which makes it pretty remarkable that Unpacking still absolutely tells a story, one with clear progression and significant events that at several points broke my heart while other moments left a huge grin on my face. Instead, you meet our protagonist and the people they live with entirely through the lens of their things at eight different stages of their lives. There are no text screens, or cutscenes, or descriptions. Unpacking never stops to tell you a story. This is something that Unpacking’s development team understands deeply. How you respond to your things, especially things that have been with you for some time, can say a lot about where you are in life. Whether you’re getting rid of things, buying new ones to fill the needs of your new home, or even just packing and unpacking them, you’re forced to consider them at least for a moment. It forces you to go through your things, analyze them, think about them. While this doesn’t speak well to my time management skills, the timing of playing this adorable little game went a long way to help drive home what Unpacking is using its character’s multiple moves to say. I found it funny that as I checked out the new PS5 release of Unpacking, I was sitting in my own new home, surrounded by boxes I probably should have been unpacking.
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