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Unpacking game length5/19/2023 This coming-of-age tale is rendered in an interactive environment that offers its audience the gift of time, not just through the decades its narrative spans, but the time each player has to spend tending to each new home and the subsequent familiarity we develop with the protagonist’s objects, tastes and needs.Īlongside the increasingly confident expectation that particular artefacts – a cookie jar, a soft toy – will continue to travel with her from house to house, comes the realisation that her expanding medicine cabinet is the result of a chronic, perhaps progressive, illness. The result is a domestic narrative game that I have seen variously described as wholesome, Zen-like and meditative – but these terms belie the emotional impact of the game. It offers no incentive to move quickly, and there is no way to win or lose. The only restriction is that every object must be unpacked and placed before the game offers the opportunity to move to the next house. Their placement is limited by the confines of the house and furniture that is already placed. Each box of packed objects only can be unpacked and arranged within the confines of an existing space and the objects that already exist in it. However, it doesn’t position its audience as an omnipotent home designer, as they are in The Sims franchise, or demand the deft spatial reasoning skills of a seasoned Tetris player. Technically, the game could be described as a home decoration simulator, or as a block puzzle. Occasions like these, when the game explicitly directs the player’s positioning of an object, are strongest when they express something honest about the protagonist’s experience. While the narrative presented in-game is fictional, the emotional underpinning of the game is inspired by the real-life emotions that arose when creative director Wren Briar and programmer/co-designer Tim Dawson moved in together. The game spans seven households during the protagonist’s life, starting in early childhood and ending in adulthood. The player is offered a house full of moving boxes that they unpack one object at a time, slowly learning about the absent inhabitant of that space, developing a relationship with her as they find new homes for familiar possessions. Unpacking is an independently developed game from Brisbane-based studio Witch Beam. Here is a home: I understand now how the people fit together in it. The image, in my mind, immediately feels intimate and tangible enough to dispel my previous confusion. I can immediately picture the tired mother, maybe humming along as a familiar playlist pipes through her headphones. Immediately, the image becomes clear – the armchair, with tissues and a lamp on the nightstand beside it, is just an arm’s length from the bouncer, once it’s nestled close by. The game indicates the nursery is a bad match too – until I happen to place it. I try again in the study, imagining the infant admiring the lights on the printer as the rhythmic movement puts them to sleep. I try the living room, next to the coffee table that supports a set of succulents, coasters and a photo book. In the final room in Unpacking, I struggle to find a place for the baby bouncer.
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