No idea why they bothered getting actors and licensed music in this, when the story is just the most barebones divorce story.
Anyways, the meat of this game revolves around the concept of manipulating items and spaces through a maquette. Anything you move in the maquette moves that item outside of it. It's a bit more complicated than that but I really don't feel like explaining it. So yeah, it's neat and pretty unique.
There's a few puzzles that use the mechanics/concept really well but there's also quite a few duds that felt cheap. I'd still recommend it to fellow first person puzzler fans.
Anyways, the meat of this game revolves around the concept of manipulating items and spaces through a maquette. Anything you move in the maquette moves that item outside of it. It's a bit more complicated than that but I really don't feel like explaining it. So yeah, it's neat and pretty unique.
There's a few puzzles that use the mechanics/concept really well but there's also quite a few duds that felt cheap. I'd still recommend it to fellow first person puzzler fans.
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
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
O jogo no início parece interessante, mas vai te estressando e frustrando no decorrer da gameplay, enquanto conta a história de um casal. Ele começa fácil e colorido e depois vai ficando mais dark e desafiador. Acredito que a proposta seja simular os pontos altos e baixos de um namoro, com o começo mais simples e depois mexendo com as suas emoções, até você sentir o alívio em terminar o jogo. Como nem tudo são flores, o jogo apresenta alguns glitches e tem problemas em alguns puzzles.
I must admit, I stuck with this longer than I stick with most first-person puzzle games. There's a cool concept to the story and the item manipulation element was neat as well. But even after giving it a somewhat decent leash, I found myself losing interest. Sometimes, games like this can feel like playing someone's art project to me. Cool ideas, but not something that grabbed me a ton.
(Game Pass) Gorgeous puzzle game with a story about a relationship ending. Good challenges and achievements to speedrun the levels. Enjoyed the art style and the VA of Bryce Dallas Howard and her husband Seth Gabel as the story couple.
Surprisingly cool concept and some decent puzzles but the game is lacking polish and the performance is too poor. There was also a seemingly irrelevant story that I got bored of after a while.
The game is pretty short and I would have finished it but my game crashed and didn't save so that was a disappointing bug for a game that's already been out for 2 years.
Overall it would probably be a decent 5/10 game with some kinks ironed out but even then it would still have a long way to go before I'd come close to going out of my way to recommend it.
The game is pretty short and I would have finished it but my game crashed and didn't save so that was a disappointing bug for a game that's already been out for 2 years.
Overall it would probably be a decent 5/10 game with some kinks ironed out but even then it would still have a long way to go before I'd come close to going out of my way to recommend it.
the concept wi feel was kind of weird to be telling in the form of a first person perspective based puzzle game but i cant say it DIDNT work. music was great visuals were great but the puzzles were lacking in quantity and quality and the controls were pretty inconsistent. not bad but certainly not amazing
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.
"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.
Maquette has a lovely core idea, the whole puzzle of playing with item perspectives but its something that gets old incredibly fast and devolves quickly into hunting tediously for the next bit of whatever you're doing. Add in an incredibly boring love story and I felt like I was falling asleep while playing it. I got about two thirds through and I just couldnt care less anymore.
Cool though sometimes kind of sluggish puzzles. Cool story too, but I didn't see the correlation between both gameplay and story which made the narrative kind of weak.
Simple storyline turned into a visually pleasing and relaxing puzzle game. This game felt like an interactive short film and that's what makes it beautiful. You are not here to stress out on solving puzzles but you are here to exercise your mind while you experience a love letter on relationships.
Another in a long line of artsy games that use bland puzzles as a vehicle to deliver a saccharine narrative that isn't nearly as poignant or original as it would like to believe.
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)
Overall, the game is interesting and enjoyable, but the puzzles can definitely be tough to mentally process a few times!
(Review from 2021)
A charming and simple puzzle game with a very pretty aesthetic
(Review from Sep 2022) Neat puzzle game with surprisingly good production quality from a story perspective. The dialogue is done really well and the music is great. The idea of the puzzles is cool but I think there are some issues with the execution sometimes. Placing staircases in particular can be really finicky and it feels bad when you go into the larger world and realize your mistake made you waste 2 minutes in an 8 minute puzzle. I had a good time with it overall though.
It's nice to look at and the concept is cool to play around with, but it doesn't do as much as it could with the idea. Instead, it focuses more on the story—a couple falling in and out of love—which isn't very interesting and whose characters don't feel like real people. Using the game world to emulate the stages of a relationship was nicely done at least. The puzzles themselves are alright; though some are frustrating, I like the all-around practical approach to solving them.
bons puzzle, o romance, a historia entre os dois personagens é boa e explora os sentimentos do ser humano
This review contains spoilers
I think the best revenge an ex-girlfriend could possibly hope for would be their former significant other developing a video game about their relationship, and it ending up like this.
A frankly embarrassing, often busted gauntlet of twee millennialism, Maquette is a somewhat brief narrative puzzle game starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Seth Gabel. Sprinkled throughout are infrequent but shockingly uninteresting puzzles that make Superliminal look like Portal. The controls are unfinished, the puzzles are glitchy, and as a package it just doesn't work. I got soft-locked thrice in three hours, and not because I'm an idiot.
As for the story, despite my rough-and-tumble, chiseled, rugged, roguish, strong, dashing, primally masculine, tough-as-nails, strapping, exceptionally hunky exterior, I have been known to experience emotions from time to time. I'm fairly certain the emotion this game is going for is 'bittersweet reminiscence', but judging by the fact that halfway through I asked my wife to chop me in half with a sword to make it stop, I think they missed the mark. I cringe, Mr. Mayor.
I could have abandoned Maquette, sure.
A frankly embarrassing, often busted gauntlet of twee millennialism, Maquette is a somewhat brief narrative puzzle game starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Seth Gabel. Sprinkled throughout are infrequent but shockingly uninteresting puzzles that make Superliminal look like Portal. The controls are unfinished, the puzzles are glitchy, and as a package it just doesn't work. I got soft-locked thrice in three hours, and not because I'm an idiot.
As for the story, despite my rough-and-tumble, chiseled, rugged, roguish, strong, dashing, primally masculine, tough-as-nails, strapping, exceptionally hunky exterior, I have been known to experience emotions from time to time. I'm fairly certain the emotion this game is going for is 'bittersweet reminiscence', but judging by the fact that halfway through I asked my wife to chop me in half with a sword to make it stop, I think they missed the mark. I cringe, Mr. Mayor.
I could have abandoned Maquette, sure.
Has nothing interesting to say, but tries its best to act like it does.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kind of awkward mechanics, puzzles mainly reliant on observation, short, mostly downtime walking. Ehhhh. Coming off the back of playing Viewfinder (and hating it), I feel softer on this game despite not really being that invested in the narrative. That said, I appreciate the artistic vision the director had for this game and I actually do think the Maquette as a set piece is really interesting, and overall was this neat sort of unfolding thing with each element symbolizing evolving parts of the main character's relationship.
While a sort of basic tale about the nature of relationships and self growth (read, shallow but not offensively, just blandly relatable), parts were well delivered, and some of the visual art on display was really fantastic. I'm not sure if all the music was original for this game, but it was pretty good too. I think if you have gamepass and would play something that looks like this have a go; though, I think in retrospect I'd say its kind of middling.
Biggest issues are that objects are clunky and its not much of a puzzle game, more like a "Whoa you gotta like, look at things a different way bro." But the gimmick is you are literally doing this in the game as the main character has to look at things differently in his life. Its a short narrative driven walking sim masquerading as a puzzle game. I think its cute, but unfortunately cute only gets you so far. 50% cute 50% boring af.
While a sort of basic tale about the nature of relationships and self growth (read, shallow but not offensively, just blandly relatable), parts were well delivered, and some of the visual art on display was really fantastic. I'm not sure if all the music was original for this game, but it was pretty good too. I think if you have gamepass and would play something that looks like this have a go; though, I think in retrospect I'd say its kind of middling.
Biggest issues are that objects are clunky and its not much of a puzzle game, more like a "Whoa you gotta like, look at things a different way bro." But the gimmick is you are literally doing this in the game as the main character has to look at things differently in his life. Its a short narrative driven walking sim masquerading as a puzzle game. I think its cute, but unfortunately cute only gets you so far. 50% cute 50% boring af.
A very strange game that I played 2 years ago, probably not as amazing as I nostalgically remember it, but for me still a very beautifull artistic game, with really strange and complicated love story. The game often dragged on for too long and was and too complicated in terms of puzzles.
The unfortunate thing about this game is that almost none of its interactions feel good. The core mechanic is neat enough to sustain it's short runtime, but at no point did it every feel really satisfying to solve or intuitive to perform the puzzle-solving required.
The entirely unnecessary story is a generic breakup tale that never feels connected to the gameplay or meangingful.
The entirely unnecessary story is a generic breakup tale that never feels connected to the gameplay or meangingful.
okay puzzle game that does some neat stuff with perspective but none of the puzzles felt all that satisfying to solve.
Great concept. Lackluster excecution.
Clever ideas, and an effective narrative, but not quite fully cohesive.
Interesante pero a veces demasiado obtuso y con una narrativa demasiado fragmentada de su gameplay.
Me gusta mucho la idea de engrandecer, empequeñecer y colocar objetos para superar puzles, pero a veces las soluciones son demasiado obtusas y no se entienden fácilmente. Y la narrativa sobre el amor está guay... pero no tiene mucho que ver con la mecánica de puzles.
Visualmente es una maravilla, eso sí, el diseño visual es tremendo. ¡Y es cortito!
Me gusta mucho la idea de engrandecer, empequeñecer y colocar objetos para superar puzles, pero a veces las soluciones son demasiado obtusas y no se entienden fácilmente. Y la narrativa sobre el amor está guay... pero no tiene mucho que ver con la mecánica de puzles.
Visualmente es una maravilla, eso sí, el diseño visual es tremendo. ¡Y es cortito!
Very good idea that I wish was executed better. Some puzzles are straight up unfinished jank but the voice acting is pretty good and the music choice is insane so I think I like it.
I usually enjoy puzzle games and walking sims and love to support Annapurna produced content. But I don’t think I finished this game - I need space on my hard drive so this got the boot to my external storage (and since you can’t play ps5 games that are on external storage it’ll be stuck for a while).
The game starts off pretty cute. The entire premise is watching a couples narrative unfold while uses a maquette to manipulate the size of various key items to drive the narrative forward.
The game is a bit abstract with the buildings and what they mean. Sometimes it seems like a place the couple lived but sometimes it looks like a rundown castle? The key items are also abstract and the connection between why you are using said item to unlock a memory doesn’t have any explanation or seem relevant- example the one level you use these different crystals but I don’t think there is any connection why you have those items - their usage is completely irrelevant to the story other than unlocking the next dialogue. For me this just made it a bit flat. I’d rather collect plants that had the same purpose and the plants tie into the memory. It felt like a big miss to conceptualize the memories.
I also felt some of the puzzles were glitchy / non responsive and some were so confusing - theres a rule that’s there is no rules. I definitely got to a point I broke my save file as I managed to break a door thinking I was solving the puzzle and when I looked up the guide on what to do I was just quite angry at the solve. I can’t say why without spoilers but I felt there was no explanation/ hint or anything on what you had to do to even get to the conclusion of the answer.
Prior to this I had about 2 hours lost in that one section and had to redo it and with the guide it took me maybe 10 minutes. That’s how complicated some of the puzzles are because you can’t always tell where you go next and you spend 20 min on a dead end only to retrace your steps.
The problem with this is you really lose the narrative if you follow a wrong lead to dead end. I forgot what the story told me by the time I finished the area the unlocking the maquette once it gets locked. And then I just lost interest and found the game to be draining to play.
I liked how Bryce Dallas-Howard and her husband did the voice acting they really did well voicing their affection for each other.
I just think the game could be more refined to help the flow so the puzzles can be complex but not hinder the narrative.
The game starts off pretty cute. The entire premise is watching a couples narrative unfold while uses a maquette to manipulate the size of various key items to drive the narrative forward.
The game is a bit abstract with the buildings and what they mean. Sometimes it seems like a place the couple lived but sometimes it looks like a rundown castle? The key items are also abstract and the connection between why you are using said item to unlock a memory doesn’t have any explanation or seem relevant- example the one level you use these different crystals but I don’t think there is any connection why you have those items - their usage is completely irrelevant to the story other than unlocking the next dialogue. For me this just made it a bit flat. I’d rather collect plants that had the same purpose and the plants tie into the memory. It felt like a big miss to conceptualize the memories.
I also felt some of the puzzles were glitchy / non responsive and some were so confusing - theres a rule that’s there is no rules. I definitely got to a point I broke my save file as I managed to break a door thinking I was solving the puzzle and when I looked up the guide on what to do I was just quite angry at the solve. I can’t say why without spoilers but I felt there was no explanation/ hint or anything on what you had to do to even get to the conclusion of the answer.
Prior to this I had about 2 hours lost in that one section and had to redo it and with the guide it took me maybe 10 minutes. That’s how complicated some of the puzzles are because you can’t always tell where you go next and you spend 20 min on a dead end only to retrace your steps.
The problem with this is you really lose the narrative if you follow a wrong lead to dead end. I forgot what the story told me by the time I finished the area the unlocking the maquette once it gets locked. And then I just lost interest and found the game to be draining to play.
I liked how Bryce Dallas-Howard and her husband did the voice acting they really did well voicing their affection for each other.
I just think the game could be more refined to help the flow so the puzzles can be complex but not hinder the narrative.