I have long had my eye on A Little to the Left, but I was sadly left disappointed by my time with it. The game sacrifices a clarity in its puzzles' design language for a sense of variety and the hope that pure intuition is enough to push the player along. And often it is - but often isn't always. The number of puzzles that required me to fumble around not for the solution, but for the objective, left me far more annoyed than energized. And while there are myriad solutions to many of the puzzles, there's usually a degree of uncertainty - yet paradoxically a level of demanding precision - that can frequently erase any sense of satisfaction the game looks to provide.

A Little to the Left's best puzzles are the ones that build on previous ones, but those don't make up for the number of challenges that seem content asking you to do something largely random. Combine this with sometimes finnicky controls and a play space that can often get too cluttered mid-solve, and you have a puzzle experience that just doesn't work for me. The game is beautifully produced, but it's also markedly frustrating. I wish that the game had been as soothing as I expected.