There were two points, both very early on, where I had involuntary reactions to Unpacking, and it shows exactly why something so uncomplicated can be explosive. In Unpacking, you play as a young woman as she unpacks her life, doing so at different moments throughout her 20s and 30s so far. Starting with your own childhood bedroom in May of 1997, you decide where everything goes. I may have had a little too much nostalgia-riddled satisfaction while unpacking the Troll doll.

Though, of course, as you get older, you get more space or if you’ve moved in with someone, you’ll have to fit into their space with more stuff. The first of those moments I mentioned a second ago came from moving into an apartment with someone at university, and I wanted to move everything so much, the least of which was the dirty dishes in the sink. The second of those incidents, I think was split into two moments, which makes this entire story. I moved in with a guy, and he had two underwear drawers (each half-empty), and I was left with two drawers in the wardrobe for my bras and underpants.

So after the internal argument that I had in my head with this make-believe partner, and believing I couldn’t move his stuff, I then realized I could. I now understand why so many women both love and hate their partners, I suddenly saw all the lovely things about this man, and every Taylor Swift song clicked into place. I had a whole existential crisis because I couldn’t move this man’s ratty old slippers to neatly put away my shoes and high heels.

If that, the simple act of placing objects to fit into someone else’s life, isn’t the peak of video game storytelling, I don’t know what is. Not a word was said, but I had an internal crisis from thinking about the conflict I’d be having over this. There is no exposition and no clunky dialogue. It is all told simply from what you can parse from a chip in a mug or an appliance taken from one relationship to a new house. It is the straightforward yet oh-so-effective detail in moving house or simply moving things about years down the line, where you still have that same cup for your toothbrush from 20 years ago.

Before I realized the 1, 2, and 3 fridge magnets were that (yes, that was an “OH!” moment), I’d left them in order in the kitchen drawer with all the baking stuff and whatever you put in that drawer. Everyone has one, it is filled with cookie cutters, rolling pins, big knives when you don’t have a block big enough, the plastic and wooden spoons you use once a week because you hardly have time to properly cook, and everything else. Some of us even have two of them, filled with clingfilm, baking paper, painkillers, letter openers, and everything else (batteries, mostly).

That’s what I think Witch Beam perfectly captured: all our collective experiences moving house throughout our lives, but telling a story with it. You don’t think of moving as a part of your story. We think of it as little more than a transition, a point between one school and another or friends that are nearby to hang out with. Despite it being a complete hassle, one that is filled with the stress and uncertainty of your future there, you are experiencing your story thus far. This makes it the perfect point for this type of voyeurism: the point we all share, offering us a great amount of empathy toward that situation.

It is that understanding we all have connected with a slightly pixelated version of our last 20 years of film, TV, toys, and tech, all wrapped up into a few short hours of basic storytelling. Pulling out the same iPod for three moves or organizing the DVD collection again and you have this innate familiarity with not only the object, but what you’ve inferred from those pixel-based boxes, controllers, and general shapes sparking memories of Tamagotchis and the naked Troll Dolls with green hair.

You only ever see objects, but a whole character portrait is painted through organizing their life. This will never be said again, but you can see relationships formed and broken through kitchen appliances.

It was a stroke of bad luck that this story came about, and I’ll try to avoid spoilers here. However, when I was unpacking in the last level, in what is meant to be a happy moment, a sad song loosely connected to that room began playing on shuffle, and it broke me. As I say, it was the stars aligning to provide such an unfortunate event, though there was enough of the story left to my imagination coupled with a particularly heartbreaking song that it struck a chord. I don’t think I’ve ever had a game unintentionally have such a strong emotional resonance, but it is something that could only happen because I was invested in the characters.

I feel as if I am repeating myself here, but it is that effective storytelling and uncomplicated way of telling the narrative that is done well. One of the biggest issues I have with storytelling lately is the idea that everything has to be large-scale, event television, the whole universe is hanging in the balance; though it is all done half-heartedly, resulting in it feeling flat.

Unpacking isn’t about alien invasions, a deadly plague, or any perfunctory named apocalypse (“the Blight,” “the Flux,” “the Scourge,” and so on). It is a simple story of a person coming of age, finding their way in life, and it is done well simply by keeping everything as straightforward as possible.

Despite this, there were two things that weren’t deal-breakers but certainly left more to be desired. The more negative one is to do with placement, for which there is an accessibility option to place objects anywhere you like, but for the first playthrough, I left those restrictions on. I won’t say I disagree with those restrictions (it is a puzzle game, after all), but there were times I thought someone is being a little too pedantic. Who says I can’t neatly put away the toy blocks stacked up on the windowsill? Why do I need to conform to this hippy lifestyle of leaving them on the floor?

Okay, joking about odd restrictions aside, the second thing that left me wanting something more is actually a positive wrapped up in a small bit of negative. I just want more. It is a bit like Return of the Obra Dinn, you can replay it, but there’s very little in the way of replayability. The story is one-and-done, though unlike Return of the Obra Dinn, the gameplay isn’t tied so closely with a mystery which the story is telling you. This is the trouble with such a well-told narrative, it took some time to properly create something told so well but equally a story told well will always be Moorish to some.

Ultimately, Unpacking is near flawless, with beautiful design and fantastic storytelling. It stands out from the crowd by simply using all the tools it has at its disposal so well. A simple bit of design, such as the drawers you put your box of tampons in closing differently because the box scrapes along the inside of the drawer, adds so much for you to piece the world together.

The fact you are connecting and understanding a character by simply playing the omnipotent god placing their objects is oddly engaging. While everyone else tries to make you connect through tragedy and exposition, Unpacking has you connect with rudimentary gameplay.

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Unpacking

$19.99

9.5

Score

9.5/10

Pros

• Extraordinary Storytelling
• Despite Never Seeing Them, Emotional Resonance With Characters
• Photo Mode

Cons

• Some Objects are Difficult to Define in Pixel Form
• Sometimes Overly Restrictive Placement