Game: A Little To The Left
Genre: Casual, Point-And-Click, Puzzle
System: Steam (Windows, macOS also available on itch.io)
Developer|Publisher: Max Inferno | Secret Mode
Controller Support: Full
Price: US $14.99 | UK £12.99 | EU € 14,99
Release Date: November 8th, 2022
Review code provided with many thanks to Press Engine.
A Little To The Left is a puzzle game that is a unique little experience. Players get to put all sorts of objects in order, fixing the little piles of chaos all over the house.
The Story and Gameplay of A Little To The Left
A Little To The Left is about finding a soothing organization in the chaos of life, then watching as a cat destroys some of your hard work almost immediately. Art truly does imitate life.
There isn’t a deep story to this little tale, but it is kind of environmentally told rather than explicitly stated. It’s about putting your life back together. Even though the pot is broken doesn’t mean you can’t glue it together again.
Just because the drawer is messy doesn’t mean you can’t put everything back where it belongs. It’s satisfying and relaxing to watch as the tool chest, the junk drawer, and even just collections of odd objects become a little more organized.
A Little To The Left is something like a non-traditional point-and-click. Players don’t move through the world, but instead, interact by just dragging and dropping objects around the screen. Sometimes, things have to go in ascending order, color order, size, or even just make patterns. The puzzles in this game are truly fun and unique.
There are also two helpful additions to this game: a robust hint system coupled with the ability to skip puzzles and come back to them later called Let It Be. Some of the puzzles kind of come out of the left field, and they can be difficult to work through without any help.
The Sound of A Little To The Left
A lot of games that I get the honour of playing before they are released are sometimes a little disorganized. There are missing textures, missing levels, or things in need of tuning. A Little To The Left is very well put together. All of the puzzles work, and I didn’t run into a single bug with the exception of the complete lack of working Steam achievements, which I was warned about ahead of time. The sound design is beautiful with gentle background music and tons of unique sounds.
All of the sounds that the developers added along with the feel of the game made me think of Unpacking, which was one of my favourite game of 2021.
Looking Forward to More
A Little To The Left is one of those games that I have had Wishlisted on Steam for about 12 months. I remember checking back on this game several times over the last few months, hoping for new news and a release date. I played through the whole game after I received it in less than 5 hours, and was absolutely enamoured with almost every second.
After I watched the final cutscene, I noticed there was an option on the front page of the game for a Daily Tidy. Every day, there’s a brand new puzzle for people to play; you can earn sticker achievements the more you play.
Since this is a cozy game, I was not surprised to find that this Daily Tidy doesn’t have any competitive attributes connected to it; you’re not trying to tidy faster than everyone else, you’re trying to complete a relaxing little daily puzzle.
The Most Realistic Game Ever
As I was trying to organize my home in the game, my real-life cat decided that she needed to help. Some of the little puzzles that included the cat messing with me reminded me of this little gremlin, and she wanted to remind me that she’s cuter and more annoying than any video game cat. Then she managed to knock over my drink, and then I had to play A Little To The Left in real life.
The Downsides of A Little To The Left
While this puzzle game is an absolute delight, there are some puzzles that were a little bit isosteric. The uniqueness of the puzzles was simultaneously one of its highlights and one of its worst faults. Once I figured out how to do them, they were delightful, but I found them to be massively frustrating when I stumbled across a new kind of puzzle for the first time.
There are almost 90 levels in this strange little game, and they are all a little different than almost any puzzle game I’ve ever played.
Pesky Cat
There is, as I have mentioned before, a cat that tends to mess up your work as you play. While this is really cute, there are a couple of levels where the cat is really obnoxious. There is one, in particular, the first of a new kind of puzzle, where the little fuzzy brat kept moving the shells as I was trying to place them. I kind of wanted to launch this game out of a window because I was already fumbling, and the cat would NOT leave me alone.
Small Niggles
There were also some other small things that irked me while playing A Little To The Left. The last level featured a Tupperware level that went on forever. I’m not sure why this was so long; at first, I thought I was doing something wrong or it had bugged out.
Finally, I noticed that the background was changing. Unfortunately, the gameplay of this section was not fun enough for the sheer amount of time it took for me to complete it. It could have been half the length and it still would have been too long.
There was also another little annoyance that was part of the polish of the game; once the Levels menu is open, you can’t close it until it’s done floating through all the levels you’ve already completed. I clicked on this menu accidentally once, and I sat there watching all 60 of the levels I’d already completed slide by before I could do anything to stop it. I probably could have stopped the game on Steam, but I didn’t want to lose any progress.
Conclusion
A Little To The Left is a wonderful game. It’s unique, it’s fun, it’s frustrating, it’s polished, and I’ve never seen anything like it before. In spite of the handful of annoyances, it was so worth playing. I am so glad that there will be Daily challenges in this game because I would sorely miss it if it was all over with. Overall, a wonderful title.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot.
