Unpacking

A masterclass in environmental storytelling.

This review contains spoilers!

Unpacking is a game about…unpacking. Image credit: Witch Beam

Unpacking is a truly delightful three-hour experience that I really wish was longer. I come back to it frequently and some extra levels would really hit the spot. However, it’s a masterful illustration of how to tell a meaningful story purely through gameplay, and it is as long as it needs to be to achieve that, so I’ll forgive it.

The title of the game is very literal. It involves you unpacking boxes as a woman moves through her life, starting with a childhood bedroom in 1997 and progressing through to a home with a nursery for herself, her partner, and their child.

The way the game illustrates the personality of the unnamed protagonist through her possessions is incredibly clever. The childhood bedroom contains a football (soccer for you degenerates) trophy, plenty of books, and a huge packet of coloured pens. There’s a framed picture of a horse, which we can deduce was drawn by the protagonist. Interestingly there are no clothes to put away in your childhood bedroom, and I’m sure I’m probably reading too far into it but I like to think that it’s because it’s just not something kids need to worry about. You concern yourself with which shelf your ponies will be on, and whether the packet of coloured pens will go in the cupboard or on the desk, but clothes aren’t a bother.

The next room you unpack is your first university dorm room, an experience I am sure will be familiar to many. The uncertainty of where, in the tiny space, all your world possessions will fit. The huge CRT computer monitor taking up the whole desk, does your hairbrush live in the bedroom or the bathroom? Having to find space for all your clothes – there aren’t enough hangers so what gets relegated to the shelf?

Every level results in a photo for the scrapbook. I found this screenshot online because I forgot to take one and the mouse being to the right of the keyboard is really annoying me. It should be where that eraser is! Image credit: Witch Beam

After every level is complete a gold star pops up and you get to take a photo for the scrap book. Depending on what room you’re in the caption will be different, and they are the only kind of text-based plot in the game. They don’t tell you much, just a single line caption of a static image of a room, but it’s enough.

The next move is one full of joy. A small house, shared by three people with hobbies in common who can cohabit with joy. The dining room has been dedicated to tabletop games – a dice tower claims pride of place on the table. And a new puzzle emerges – how do you share kitchen space? The game does give you some guidance – simply taking items out of boxes isn’t enough and when you’ve emptied all the cardboard, if you’ve left some knickers in the kitchen or something, the incorrectly placed item will be highlighted in red and you have to move it before you can progress to the next level.

Unless you’re playing the chaotic ‘Dark Star’ mode, which is a nifty secret mode that unlocks after completing the normal story once. You start a new game and instead of arranging items neatly on shelves and in drawers, you are specifically trying to make sure nothing is where it’s meant to go. When you’ve filled your kitchen drawers with bras and put the plates on the sofa, instead of a nice rewarding gold star indicating the level is complete, a dark one lets you know that yes, every single item is somewhere it doesn’t belong. Even the scrapbook captions make note of the untidiness. Moving into your first share house the caption reads “They knew me at uni, they knew what to expect.” We’ve all had friends like the dark star Unpacking protagonist!

Do you put things away as you go or do you unpack every box onto the floor and work from there? Image credit: Witch Beam

The level where the protagonist moves in with a guy for the first time made me emotional. So often women have to make themselves small and ensure their lives fit around a man, and this silly little game about unpacking boxes shows that off better than some much more complex stories have managed. I distinctly remember flicking through the rooms holding the framed degree certificate and realising gradually that no, there’s no space left on the walls or shelves that it can go. You have to put the degree under the bed. It such a small part of the level, just one item amongst your worldly possessions, but it tells you so much.

This game really made me think about the spaces we occupy and the way a life can be followed through the places we live. How some things come with us through space and time, picking up their own signs of age – a crack, a tear, some tape. It’s also a masterclass in environmental storytelling, because that’s all it does. It tells a story through the environment, and the story is deep and meaningful. It makes me think about the capacity for storytelling that gets left by the wayside by some games that are less concerned with what the world can tell us because they can make characters say it or print it on newspapers or leave an audio recording to tell us.

The same goes for characterisation. Nowhere does it say in words ‘the protagonist from Unpacking is a bisexual’ but we can see how that is true through what the game shows us. I am certain that Unpacking is worth every single penny I spent on it. The mechanics and gameplay are fun, there’s no denying that, so if that’s what you want out of a game then you’ll get it, but it gives so much more on top. It’s one of my favourite games from the last few years and if Witch Beam made sequel after sequel telling stories through homes and possessions, I’d buy them all.

I hope my love for this game comes across in this piece. I truly believe it’s exceptional storytelling and if you have ever thought about telling any kind of tale, you could learn a lot from Unpacking. And if you like to experience stories, this one does it in a way that marries gameplay and plot extremely well. I don’t want these reviews to just be me gushing excitedly over every game but I truly love Unpacking so it’s a challenge.

• Game: Unpacking

• Developer: Witch Beam

• Publisher: Humble Games

• Platforms: PC, Apple Arcade, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch