Maquette struggles in places to work as a game and doesn't always mesh well in its story-driven content either. Although I enjoyed some of the recursive puzzles a lot, there were plenty that were so obtuse and out there that they made me feel dumb when I worked out the solution. I don't think that's a marker of good ludic design if the way to play the game alters this much.

Sure, it's a beautiful looking game (although on PS4 suffers from significant frame-rate issues and stuttering) and the love story between the two feels like a modern, realistic attempt at navigating relationships.

That said, why is it told through a maquette world? What is the maquette of the gameplay and title really for? I get that there were some metaphoric connections between symbolism in the maquette and the real world, but it felt very tacked on. I learnt after finishing the game that this whole story WAS tacked on. Originally, the story revolved around a more fantastical setting involving a wizard trapping someone in the maquette. Makes more sense than what we got.

The game left me feeling frustrated, miserable and honestly quite bored.