Maquette

man what is it with indie developers and thinking 'story about a relationship that went sour narrated by the man' is in any way unique or subversive

Like, okay, I'll give the game some things. The art direction is gorgeous — a core and actually distinct theme in this otherwise trite story is that both parties involved are artists and view the world through the lens of art and while the conversations themselves don't have a lot of worth (i want a fridge that's sideways instead of vertical because i'm quirky xd! this is the part in the story where we're deliriously happy with one another so that when juxtaposed with the very next chapter when we hate each other and break up this'll ring as bittersweet in hindsight) the visual of the drawing slowly coming together was mesmerizing and really did sell me on the game's art direction. I also was interested in the central conceit of the gameplay — messing with the maquette to make objects bigger or smaller, breaking through the boundary of the world to make _yourself_ smaller is conceptually interesting, but in practice, the game doesn't teach you any of its mechanics which made me have to check the walkthrough frequently to know where the puzzle even was and to see what obscure mechanic from two chapters ago was being brought back and many of the solutions themselves were wrought with slowness, tedium, and brute-forcing against the game's physics engine until things arbitrarily worked. Always frustrating, never really fun.

I would've maybe given this game a borderline pass if one of its aspects really worked beyond the conceptual level, overall, but between a story that's not as distinct as it thinks it is and puzzle gameplay that should work more than it actually does, art design and presentation are only barely enough to stop this game from being bad.