Unpacking game length5/21/2023 You see the character evolve without ever meeting them face to face. And then the eventual discovery of your own space and the freedom you have to move within it. From the optimistic awkwardness of house sharing through to the discomfort that comes from living in someone else’s house. From childhood into the overwhelming moments of early adulthood. Ultimately, it is a game about growing up. Even the placement of certain objects (the diploma stashed in the wardrobe of a boyfriends’ flat) paints more detail into the picture of the main characters’ state of mind. Somehow, it manages to convey the main character’s life – their career pursuits, their passions from childhood, their relationships, their heartbreaks and disappointments, their interests, their successes – purely through the objects that they own. It is the story of a person through the objects that they own. There aren’t any characters to talk to, and there isn’t a script (apart from the quick captions under the snapshots of each completed house in your scrapbook, which incidentally, travels with you to every home you live in).īut despite the lack of obvious storytelling tools, Unpacking tells a story just the same. It doesn’t sound like there’s much to figure out here in terms of the story. Others shift and change (a new mug in 2004 becomes a chipped toothbrush holder in 2007). Some objects (a soft toy, a sketchbook) go with you all the way from childhood to your university house to your first house share and beyond. As you move on through time (all the way to 2018), you’ll start to notice patterns. Once you’ve finished that room, you’ll move on to the next house. It’s a nostalgia hit for frazzled and overwhelmed millennials, but not in an in-your-face sort of way. You’ll uncover a Tamagotchi, a tape player, a My Little Pony, a Rubik’s Cube. The game opens in 1997, with you unpacking your bedroom. You, as the player, unpack the various houses you have lived in since childhood. There aren’t many of these, but it does help to elongate the game a little bit. You can snap pictures of your finished rooms, decorating them with stickers that you unlock through completing the story, or by following clues (‘Game On’, ‘Tidy Whities’). Once you’ve finished unpacking all the boxes, any items that have not been put away correctly will glow with a red outline until you’ve found the right area for them. There’s a bit of a puzzle element involved. It’s calming, and methodical, and allows you to arrange items exactly how you would like them to be, which is very pleasing if you like things to be neat and orderly. It’s like real-life unpacking, only much more bearable because it involves less physical effort. You click to open a box and click again to remove an item, and then you put it somewhere. Unpacking is, in terms of gameplay, exactly as it sounds. And it’s only upon playing Unpacking that I’ve realised why. I couldn’t explain to her why I suddenly held such a fierce attachment to an item that a) has never been used for its intended purpose and b) is a souvenir from a country that neither of us has ever actually visited. ‘ Because,’ I said, stubbornly, ‘We’ve always had it.’
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