Kai Arcos Jiménez

#Thoughts

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot more games that aim to provide a relaxing and wholesome space to unwind. Titles like Animal Crossing: New Horizons or Stardew Valley are now referred to as “cozy games”, and the amount of content associated to them has grown over the past few years. A Little to the Left belongs to this category.

The game follows the player along as they tidy up their home through a series of puzzles focused on the theme of organisation. While I ultimately enjoyed it, I found that some of the puzzles were more interesting than others, and many of them did not account for multiple solutions. Answers that appeared obvious to me were not accepted, which could be slightly frustrating at times.

If you’re looking for exciting gameplay, this might not be the one for you. The puzzle-solving is all there is to the game; no cutscenes, text, or different gameplay modes to tie the puzzles together. This may be a positive for some, but it can get a bit repetitive since the puzzles themselves are all quite similar. It was a game that I preferred to pick up for short periods of time, yet I finished it in just a few days as it is quite short, making it a great option as a break in between longer titles.

One of my favourite aspects of the game was the soundtrack, paired with the sound design. It complimented the gameplay and art style nicely, and made moving things around within the puzzles more satisfying. There are great sequences of puzzles that feel quite seamless partly thanks to the way the music progresses.

Of course, I can’t close this post without mentioning the mischievous cat that makes sorting and organising things more challenging. When the player’s feline friend becomes more of a protagonist, it’s easy to tell that this game was made by people who love their pets. As the chosen human of a pretty chaotic cat, this made the journey more relatable (and convinced me to add the available DLCs to my backlog).

#Sneak peek