Unpacking

Unpacking is a cozy sorting game about moving to new places and arranging your home. Each level presents you with a number of rooms and several moving boxes inside; you have to take personal items out of the boxes, and put them where you think they should go. Instead of cutscenes or voice acting, environmental storytelling is used to let you inside the main character’s life.

The game is split into a handful of scenes, each of them titled with the year it takes place in. Starting in 1997 with the main character still a teenager, you get to unpack her belongings every time she moves to a new place. There’s a measure of common sense to apply (don’t try to keep your toothbrush in the bedroom drawer), but other than that the requirements are rather loose, and the game encourages you to get creative.

As time goes by, the levels evolve from a child’s bedroom to full-fledged homes. They accumulate more clutter, as well as more rooms to organize. Mirroring the main character in her collection of sentimental items, the player is awarded stickers when completing extra requirements. There’s also a camera mode for taking pictures at any point during gameplay. Some stages have maps showing you the layout of the rooms, and allowing you to jump between them.

Though the game is fairly simple, storage is sometimes limited, and later levels require a bit of spatial reasoning to fit everything into tight spaces. If you happen to misplace an item, it will gently blink with a red outline once all boxes have been unloaded, signalling that you should move it somewhere else. There is no time limit or pressure to completely unpack, so the game still fits into the zen category.

Paying attention to the story told through these items may help players figure out how to unpack properly. Subtle clues, such as an apartment that already has some personal effects in it, or a photo that needs to be hidden away, tell a softly emotional story that spans over two decades. At the end of each scene, a short note written by the main character is revealed. Still, most of the story is conveyed through familiar belongings that are carried across time and places.

This description was written by Cay Macres and edited by Oriane Tury.