Unpacking also has some accessibility for vision available, with the main big feature being that you’re able to increase the size of the HUD elements to a fairly nice size. Apologies for the overuse of the word “placing” and “placed” there. If it cannot be placed, the item will be slightly transparent instead of opaque. The main outlines are the red ones I mentioned earlier that appear once all boxes have been emptied, and there’s an option to adjust the color of this outline from the settings.īut on the topic of precision, when it comes to placing your items, there’s no outline for where you’re placing them, but they do snap to each available space depending on whether it can be placed or not. It could have been nice to have any available item to present an outline once hovered over, which could also help with precision. When hovering over items that can be picked up, there’s no outline, and the mouse cursor only shows a subtle visual indication for interacting for opening unopened boxes or doors and drawers. Unpacking has a small number of outlines for items, but I felt like more could have been done. For those on the Nintendo Switch or even the upcoming Steam Deck, touchscreen support is available, although with how precise some of the cursor clicks are for some items, it’ll be better to use the game’s zoom function. However, to navigate the world you’ll be using a cursor controlled by thumbsticks. The controller support fares better in Unpacking, allowing remapping but also the use of triggers to swap rooms, buttons to open HUD elements, and zoom with the d-pad. It would have been fantastic to see stronger accessibility support here for Unpacking with perhaps a Tab system to cycle through the simple HUD elements, or using WASD to scroll through available interactive objects, and even having a button to instantly withdraw an item from a box. On that note, the main menu cannot be navigated with keyboard inputs. For example, I can change the left mouse click input to E for picking items up, but that means I lose the left mouse click capability for menu navigation. The main issue I see here is that you cannot double up on inputs. While the mouse acts as an important input for navigating the game, the keyboard can be remapped to make use of HUD elements, switching between rooms, even rebinding the inputs for picking up and rotating items. There’s no dragging and dropping available and there’s no time limit to penalize you as well as there being no scoring system to make you feel as if you’ve not done the best you can do. You can simply use the mouse to click once to pick up, then click a second time to place. One of the joys of Unpacking for me was how simple it is to play with a mouse. While the puzzle element is removed, you can still enjoy putting things away as a therapeutic experience, or maybe again, if you’re like me, and find items belonging in another room and just dump them on the floor and plan to “get to them later”.

Although, those outlines could be a lot more prominent than they actually are, as really they’re a touch on the thin side.įor those looking for a more zen experience, or if you’re like me and couldn’t make out what some of the smaller items are due to Unpacking‘s pixel art style, thus not knowing where it belongs, you can toggle a feature that allows you to place items anywhere and still complete the level. If you haven’t put these away properly, then when all boxes have been emptied, the game will highlight any items with a red outline, requiring you to find their designated area before the level can be completed. The goal is always simple, to place these items away in places you’d assume them to be placed with the puzzle element requiring you to ensure all items have been correctly placed in decent areas.

Jumping into your new living spaces, the game starts off small, having you unpacking items in a simple bedroom before progressing to places that have more rooms with more boxes to unpack.

Unpacking review