Game: LOVE – A Puzzle Box Filled with Stories
Genre: Adventure, Puzzle, Lifestyle
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam, Windows & macOS )
Developers | Publishers: Rocketship Park | Thalamus Digital
Age Rating: US E10+ | EU 12+
Price: US $19.99| UK £19.99 | EU € 19,99
Release Date: May 28th, 2021
Review code used, with many thanks to Press Engine
LOVE – A Puzzle Box Filled with Stories is a puzzle game that centres around a single block of flats or apartments and its residents.
A Puzzle Box Filled with Stories
The aim of the game is to fill an album with photos of the people that live there. The photos come in matching pairs, one photo from the past and one shot from the present. The images tell a story across a set of eight pictures, a story without words that you have to piece together.
To get you started with each puzzle, you’re gifted a few photos to use as a starting point, and it’s up to you to explore the block of flats and solve the puzzles within. Then, you can interact with it and influence the relationships of those who live there to capture the missing landmark moments of their lives.
Spilt Building
Are you puzzled (pun intended) as to how you take photos of the past? That’s where LOVE – A Puzzle Box Filled with Storie’s unique mechanic comes into play.
First, the block of flats is split into two sections. The left side of the building is set in the past. In the past, everything is shown in black and white with red accents. The right side of the block is set in the present, and it is presented in full colour. Each floor of the block of flats can be independently rotated. As you turn the floor, the contents of each of the rooms pass through a time divide that changes the scene before your eyes.
Each Floor Rotates
The apartment complex has four rooms per level, and each floor rotates to be viewed in the past or the present. Thus, many interactions are between the apartment levels, and occasionally, there are even fragments drifting from the past into the present.
However, the puzzles aren’t always that easy, as there aren’t any hints. You can be left floundering, clicking aimlessly on the building. Once you’ve completed an album page, more pages and more people will start to appear. Apartments that previously didn’t contain anything will pop up with new people and stories.
Young and Old
So when you send a room into the past, the people inside will be young again. The flat opposite will have been transported to the present, ageing the room, its contents and its inhabitants. Girls and boys grow up and become adults; couples separate, people die, children appear and disappear, life moves on!
You can also interact with the characters. However, they don’t do a lot. They tend to sit or stand where they are, but occasionally you can direct them to move somewhere or interact with something, and in doing so, move their stories on.
A few Niggles
Overall I enjoyed the mechanic of having to turn the building into the past or present. Some of the stories were interesting as I watched peoples lives progress through the years. Stories that are heartwarming, sad and thought-provoking, tales of everyday life. Though due to the graphics of the game I found that, since the characters are without facial expressions, it is very hard for the player to connect with them. Because of that, you end up not really caring what happens to them. I also found that it was hard to distinguish what could be interacted with, when I was required to interact with objects within the apartments such as computers.
This issue was most prevalent in the final acts of the game where I had to send out invitations that must be collected and delivered. Though a zoom feature is provided, distinguishing the small envelopes from the table provided a frustrating challenge for me.
Conclusion – A Mixed Bag
LOVE – A Puzzle Box Filled with Stories is a short game, I completed it in well under an hour. That brings me to another niggle I have with the game. At the full price of £19.99/$19.99/€19,99 the game is way overpriced for what you get. Yes, it does have an interesting mechanism of moving the room around but the novelty of that soon wears off when you are not that connected to the characters in the game.
The music in the game is lovely but again it’s something that you like the first time but not when you hear it constantly on repeat. On a side note, LOVE – A Puzzle Box Filled with Stories is on sale in the eShop until 7th November, so if you do want to try it out now would be a good time to purchase it.
Final Verdict: I’m Not Sure 