I hate to be harsh on small and passionate indie devs, but I don't think this game achieved any goal beyond the most superficial, and even those achievements are questionable.
Everyone already mentioned how the puzzle mechanics don't have any challenge to them at all, but challenge is obviously not what the devs were going for here. If I were to guess the intent here, it was to impart onto the player the feeling of enjoyable tactile tinkering with small things, and also of how these things connect to real stories of real people's lives. And to be cute cosy relaxing chill vibes nice game, of course.
Whatever you can say about Assemble With Care, at least the first objective was, like, way on it's way to being completed, as it is oddly satisfying to watch old gadgets and appliances be dissassembled, old parts replaced with new, and then reassambled again. Unfortunately, the game as a whole, and by extension the main gameplay mechanics weren't terribly well thought-out or polished, which leaves the frankly bland writing standing mostly alone in this field. And it can't quite manage on it's own, because the way the stories of the city's residents has been incorporated into the overall narrative just didn't work for me. It's just too blunt and rushed to really pull you in, with a lot of "Hey, can you fix my thing? It's a gift from my partner. Wish they were here still...ever since they're gone life hasn't quite been the same" from a lot of randoes you don't care about. I get that shorter narratives exist and you don't have to spend dozens of pages with a character to sympathise with them, but this is just bad pacing, man! I usually reserve the under 2.5 stars scores for some genuinely bad games, but this one was mostly just nothing for me, to the point where anything above 1 seems too generous.
Everyone already mentioned how the puzzle mechanics don't have any challenge to them at all, but challenge is obviously not what the devs were going for here. If I were to guess the intent here, it was to impart onto the player the feeling of enjoyable tactile tinkering with small things, and also of how these things connect to real stories of real people's lives. And to be cute cosy relaxing chill vibes nice game, of course.
Whatever you can say about Assemble With Care, at least the first objective was, like, way on it's way to being completed, as it is oddly satisfying to watch old gadgets and appliances be dissassembled, old parts replaced with new, and then reassambled again. Unfortunately, the game as a whole, and by extension the main gameplay mechanics weren't terribly well thought-out or polished, which leaves the frankly bland writing standing mostly alone in this field. And it can't quite manage on it's own, because the way the stories of the city's residents has been incorporated into the overall narrative just didn't work for me. It's just too blunt and rushed to really pull you in, with a lot of "Hey, can you fix my thing? It's a gift from my partner. Wish they were here still...ever since they're gone life hasn't quite been the same" from a lot of randoes you don't care about. I get that shorter narratives exist and you don't have to spend dozens of pages with a character to sympathise with them, but this is just bad pacing, man! I usually reserve the under 2.5 stars scores for some genuinely bad games, but this one was mostly just nothing for me, to the point where anything above 1 seems too generous.