Maquette parecia ser a nova joia bruta da Annapurna, trazendo mais uma experiência única e cheia de inventividade para uma mídia saturada e que carece de novas ideias. Seus visuais conquistavam qualquer amante de obras independentes, além de contar com uma trilha sonora poderosa e uma premissa curiosa, utilizando proporcionalidade como a base de seus puzzles. Não foi preciso muito tempo para eu perceber como suas mecânicas eram divertidas e caprichadas, o que me motivava a ficar verificando as possibilidades que se abriam em minha mente para cada novo desafio que aparecia em meu caminho. Contudo, essa mecânica não foi o suficiente para me fazer ignorar os problemas de desempenho da versão de PC, com uma taxa de quadros extremamente instável e oscilante, tornando a experiência num verdadeiro sofrimento físico e mental. E já não bastasse isso, a própria obra perde seu fascínio após sua metade, o que ampliava cada vez mais a minha frustração pelo potencial desperdiçado e pelos problemas técnicos que permanecem incorrigíveis até hoje. Diante do que parecia ser um novo clássico do gênero de puzzles, Maquette se contenta como uma obra que alterna entre ser divertida e irritante, além de ser particularmente uma decepção para mim, que coloquei tanta esperança nesse título.

When I solved the first puzzle and it played a super catchy and mellow Meredith Edgar song I was 100% on board: solve a puzzle, get a song! What a great concept! I could hear some rad new licensed indie jams while stroking my brain like it was Donald Pleasance's cat. This excitement lasted for exactly two songs. Unfortunately the puzzles turned frustrating pretty fast, and then they stopped delivering the music altogether, focusing instead on an interpersonal story that didn't grab me.

The main thing I took away from this is what a huge impact licensed music makes on me in a game. Life is Strange is the other big example I can think of where I was immediately drawn in by it. Honestly I wasn't even all that super into the songs; mostly they sounded like something you'd hear at your local coffee shop, but almost as soon as they started I could feel myself becoming more emotionally invested. I guess I'm an easy mark for that stuff; maybe I should seek out more games like this.

Maquette - e se estenderemos a gameplay de Superliminal e mostrarmos como não ter um bom storytelling?
Maquette é um dos piores jogos que já joguei, eu me esforcei até onde deu mas é ruim demais para a Annapurna, é um jogo com mecânica de manipular o tamanho de um objeto através da perspectiva (novidade) enquanto é interrompido constantemente com "cutscenes" abstratas dos protagonistas da obra, é um desserviço terrível a ludonarrativa que insiste em não usar a gameplay como extensão do texto, a maior sutileza da obra está em caixas de textos flutuantes contextualizando
Toda a plot também é bem sem sal, dois malucos aleatórios que se encontram em um café e gostam de desenhar, começam a se gostar e o máximo que a gameplay faz para contextualizar é as fases se passarem nos mesmos que eles se encontraram (até certo ponto,)
Eu dropei fácil

Ultimately, Maquette is a one trick pony of a puzzle game that often involves somewhat devious out of the box solving that leads to more frustration then making you feel clever. The story is rather one note, the visuals are really pretty, but overall everything about this game feels kinda hollow.

I don't really want to seem so harsh on this game, but it certainly feels like it's trying to say something with it's story, but neither side really connects. Puzzles led to scenes of areas that the characters have been too, but really they just feel more like dolls playing house rather than exploring someone's life. Honestly, it feels like this could have been an entirely different story involving different people with similar beats and no one would be the wiser. Nothing substantial happens with the gameplay, and nothing narrative wise effects it. It's a lot like giving Flower (From Thatgamecompany) a story when that clearly wasn't the point of it. Flower is meant to look pretty, be visually appealing, and be a mellowed out experience. If you give Flower a story outside of it, like a father and daughter bonding, then suddenly it starts to losing a lot of it's magic. That's what Maquette did, it had this really neat visual puzzle game and slapped a story where it shouldn't go. This, of course, isn't getting into the quality of the story either, but I think it's better said that it's plots been done better in lesser time by lesser budgeted games.

Majority of puzzles feel like they can be thought out with guess work, but a number of them feel far too out there for a player to just get. It's not even to a different mechanic either, nearly every single puzzle uses it's ability of size manipulation and movement to get anything done. It's just the way that the game will often require you to use that movement in a way that isn't even introduced to you. It really is an oddity of "was I just not paying attention" , and the way the game teaches you what to pay attention to. It's fairly consistent about using items to unlock a path to get between points A, B, and C so you can acquire mcguffin D. Later on however you are consistently asked to start thinking outside the box in order to solve puzzles or pay attention to certain features you usually wouldn't. This by all means doesn't mean all the puzzles are bad, but I did feel often ripped off compared to just saying that was a clever way of doing something. Still for doing exactly one thing for nearly 5 hours, I have to say that the games puzzles start strong and end strong. It may be a consistent trick, but this pony at least exhausted everything it could from it.

This puzzler is certainly a pain in terms of where it really sets in how much I like it, but I have always been a real big fan of small miniature things to began with. The story is serviceable, but the puzzles at least have some proper substance to them. So it's really hard to just say Maquette is a bad game. Fairly, I think what rubs people the wrong way with Maquette is it's story rather than it's mechanics. The story just feels detached, and when you are rewarded from solving a hard puzzle you rather enjoy something good over two hipsters whining about not getting a home.

Cool conceit for a puzzle game, and when it clicks it clicks really well… but only a few levels in, I already encountered what I’m pretty sure is a game-killing bug where a key I need to finish the level disappeared, and I don’t really feel like restarting the level, especially as the various manipulations of color-coded gems were already starting to overstay their welcome. Lots of potential, there’s a chance I’ll come back to it, but it just doesn’t feel as polished or tightly designed as it should.

From wikipedia:
"During development, the game's story was originally about a character trapped in a dungeon by a wizard. After a few years of production, the project lead felt uninspired by it, and rewrote it into a love story."

From me:
Tech bros cannot write love stories to save their fucking lives. Their lives are already basically about being a wizard trapping people into dungeons of conversation. That'd be a more honest impulse to explore.

I didn't like anything about my time with Maquette, unfortunately.

The story is fairly generic, basically following the most rote version of a boy-meets-girl-but-it-doesn't-work-out type of narrative. It is told with very ponderous, voice-acted cutscenes that happen way too often, pull control away from the player, and when they were occurring were more annoying than interesting.

The idea behind the puzzles in Maquette is interesting, being able to manipulate the size of objects by placing it in different versions of the same space, but the puzzles themselves fail to deliver on this promise. The majority of the puzzles boil down to "do the only thing you can do right now" and the other 10% force you to make an arbitrary connection between untaught ideas or notice some small detail in the environment or objects around you.
One sequence of puzzles even introduces arbitrary changes to the rules of the world in order to make them work (picking up and putting down objects changes, gravity (!?) changes, etc...)

I cannot recommend this game to anyone.

This enters the hall of fame of indie games with great concepts in great trailers that failed to disclose the trailer had the one good execution of that great concept. If another team took a crack at this game’s recursive level puzzle concept, we’d have a 3D contender for brain-melting goodness on par with Baba is You. For now, we have this tosh.

Maquette’s base concept of recursive level design feels like it could be as good as thinking with Portals. Every level has a diorama of the level within it, and any object you place within the model is moved proportionally outside of it. This means you can change the size of objects by moving them between recursions, or explore at different senses of scale by venturing forward yourself. The same physical key can be shrunk to unlock a door within the diorama, or enlarged to be used as a bridge. I normally maintain we, as a species, have met our quota of Alice in Wonderland themed media, but I would allow an exception in this case.

Unfortunately, not every level uses this recursion mechanic properly, and others are bloated with vaguely-related but still generic puzzle solving. The proper levels still limit the number of objects used to one or two at a time, and there’s severe gatekeeping to guide the player towards what part of the diorama to examine next. There just isn’t the complexity present promised by the premise. The genuinely brilliant puzzle solutions were so distended by mush I discounted them as possibilities because my opinion of the game’s creativity sank so low in the valleys between the modest highs.

What cratered the game for me from “disappointing” to “bad enough to derisively mock with my friends” was the truly atrocious unrelated romance story that serves as the “reward” for advancing the levels. The writing is the most twee, saccharine, vapid, shallow, privileged, infuriatingly juvenile “romance” story I have encountered in an indie game yet. To call it pretentious does not convey nearly enough contempt. It is so bad and played so completely straight my brain implodes trying to imagine what kind of person thought this would be of interest to anyone, much less relatable, much less of any emotional worth, enough to record multiple minutes worth of spoken dialog. If there are real people in California like this, I hope they die before I meet them.

In my rating system, 2 stars represents an average, C rank game. Between Maquette’s highs and lows, no other rating feels more correct, even though this one doesn’t feel correct, either. If anything, the game feels incomplete, like brilliance was stumbled upon by people who can’t design puzzles. If this was a single dungeon within a mediocre Legend of Zelda game, that game would win game of the year a decade ago.

In Maquette, a promising concept is stretched into eternal, multi-layered stupidity.

In defense of this game, I was not in my most patient shape while playing this game. But yet, it really tests you throughout the full playthrough. The main focus is to solve recursive puzzles, by experimenting with changing the size and the original use of objects, which sounds cool on paper, but was not well executed.

I felt stupid, while playing the game and that is a feeling you should strictly try avoiding to invoke your players. I found myself cursing over and over again about plot, mechanics and movement, because the console controls are laggy and tedious, the puzzle solutions are mostly counter-intuitive and the plot is the pinnacle of head-scratching, lazy storytelling.

The underlying story, told in text fragments and audio snippets, is a pain in the ass. It retells the dysfunctional love story of Kenzie and Michael, which are complete idiots, when it comes to communicating properly and at least try to live in a healthy, respectful and open minded relationship. Their interpersonal inability is just painful to watch and listen to and to be honest, I am tired, bored and annoyed to get served with these copy-and-paste, expired, so-called love stories, that still try to manifest that this is the circle of life and love is equal to pain and ignorance. Either grow out of your ego-mania or go to (couple) therapy!

On the one hand, I feel sorry, to be this rude, but on the other, this game made me feel gut wrenching miserable and repelled me from minute one till the very end.

Why do I still rate this game a 2.5 or even finished it, when it hurt so much? One thing that really stood out and frequently saved me from quitting, is the splendid selection of tunes, that really hit the right note every time. If you have a weakness for kitschy indie, soft-rock music, the tracks will produce a regular dose of goosebumps. They finally made my head nod in emotional response and not in endless desperation.

Maquette was a very interesting puzzle game that incorporates perspective very well. You solve the puzzles through a recursive view, meaning you see the world you are in, just a smaller replica of the area you're at. Each puzzle illustrates the game's love story well through various difficulties. Some of the later puzzles got me a bit mentally frustrated, but what kept me pushing through was the engrossing story of the two characters, Kenzie and Michael. Both played by real-life married couple Bryce Dallas Howard and Seth Gable.

Overall, the game is interesting and enjoyable, but the puzzles can definitely be tough to mentally process a few times!

(Review from 2021)

I admittedly grumbled when I first saw that all too familiar notebook-writing conjuring itself over the scenery of the opening walk through the garden. In the vein of previous titles, such as Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch, Annapurna Interactive return to telling sad stories, about annoyingly twee young people, through mind-bending environments that abstract their changing mental states.
The relationship narrative here is simple but painfully typical of this sort of game. It was only last month PS Plus gave us Concrete Genie, another smug game about sketching hipsters, ugh.
That said, it works just fine, syncing emotionally the enjoyable (and sometimes hard?) puzzle-solving gameplay.

Maquette brilha com uma mecânica única que o torna mais uma obra única da Annapurna, a trilha sonora carregada de emoção é a minha parte favorita do jogo.

Infelizmente, a movimentação travada, tanto para se movimentar pelo mapa quanto para mover os objetos, prejudica a experiencia. A história envolta também não me pegou, acho que, dentro de um jogo tão criativo, poderiam ter bolado uma história de separação de casal mais diferente também.

Valeu a experiência pelo seu diferencial, mas não é algo imperdível e nem marcante o suficiente para se recomendar tanto assim.

Reviewed on 03/14/21

I’m constantly on the lookout for the puzzle game high that Portal 2 and The Talos Principle gave me, and while there are a few clever puzzles here and there, Maquette doesn’t quite deliver. This focuses more on open-ended problems rather than specific “puzzle chambers”, but some puzzles were way too open-ended, while others were much too obvious, leading to an uneven experience overall. And while I appreciate that the story didn’t just try to do a straight rip of Portal’s tone (a problem plaguing many puzzle games), its focus on the dissolution of a relationship felt a bit too familiar, with no real hooks or twists on the formula to speak of. However, seeing as this is the first game from Graceful Decay, I can see enough promise here to keep up on whatever they’re up to next.

Rating: 6/10
Platinum Difficulty: 2/10
Platinum #160

As a narrative first game, I really appreciate stories of falling out and noticing little things through its albeit hard yet thematic puzzles. I love how the puzzles are non-trivial and made me feel clever solving them which is rare in this genre.

What hurts this game the most is the lacking story considering its genre. I do sympathize with the characters, but I did not get a sense of their character or conflict with the fragmented approach to narrative. It feels like hitting the general points but not the details in between which makes stories special. Given its indie scale, I do understand the style and approach, but it left me wanting.

For some minor issues, moving an object is very rigid and feels unresponsive or clunky. This also lacks some accessibility options such as subtitles for the cutscenes (the audio mixing can be rough), a sprint option for the tedious traversal and probably a hint/skip puzzle system as they are not the focus (as much as I like them.)

This is still a good game with a heart and would not mind another iteration as a harder yet more focused puzzle game.