One puzzle specifically featuring two buildings and how they fit together in order to make a passage to the next bit really didn’t click in a big way.īut although the puzzle elements of Maquette are flawed (but still mostly good for the first few chapters at least), there is still an appreciation for how Graceful Decay tried to blend it into how it told Kenzie and Michael’s story. But towards the end of the game, they do get a bit stale when factoring in that recursive nature.
Maquette’s puzzle design is novel enough in ways that work for the most part and there are certain puzzles in the game that genuinely bring a smile at times for how clever they are, particular within the game’s first two chapters. You could say Maquette is taking inspirations from games like Superliminal, Portal and to a much lesser extent The Witness, although it has existed as a project since at least 2011 when it was first shown at that year’s Game Developers Conference. You do so through the lens of a recursive puzzle game that adds tonally to what Kenzie and Michael’s relationship is about. Over the course of the game, you’ll explore how they met, how their relationship started, the many facets of being together (the good and bad) and – spoilers – how it ends. In this case, you explore the origins of a relationship of two characters, Kenzie and Michael (played respectively by real-life married couple Bryce Dallas Howard of Jurrasic World and Seth Gabel of Fringe). But with Maquette, it also seems to have unintentionally found an MO of publishing compelling games about love, relationships, romance and the facets that come with them.
It has put out a lot of brilliant games since its inception in 2015 from the dramatic and serious to the goofy and funny. 2018’s Florence from Australian developer Mountains was a brief yet brilliant game that told the chronicles of Florence and Krish’s relationship from start to finish with simple but good puzzle design.Ģ019’s Sayonara Wild Hearts from Simogo didn’t tell a love story per se, but it told a story of heartbreak after a relationship ends and the process of finding yourself again through the guise of an incredible soundtrack and style that very few games possess.Ģ021’s Maquette marks off the final chapter of an unofficial trilogy of games that Annapurna as a publisher has released the past three years. Over the past few years, publisher Annapurna Interactive has published two games that tell of love, romance and heartbreak in different but compelling, interesting and unique ways. But telling them in a thought-provoking or at least entertaining way is hard.
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