The third chapter is built around using a giant staircase to reach new heights. Similarly, you can use the world around you to further manipulate the sizes of these items. The surroundings shake as it hits the ground. Wherever you move the miniature cube, the larger one will fall out of the sky and land on top. It’s located in the same spot in the miniature, and only you can pick that one up. The first of these is a giant cube sitting on the sidewalk. In each chapter, you’ll find various interactable objects. Maquette often takes place in various models of the same area. As I looked skyward, while not under the dome in the center, I noticed a much larger dome overhead. It’s not that the miniature in the dome is a little, fake version of the area. The domed area has a miniature version of the area you find yourself in, which I thought was cute. You’ll need to go into each area to bear witness to memories in order to progress the story.

You go through the game’s intro and then enter a location with four areas on each side and a domed structure in the middle. Much like Superliminal, this is a game about perspective, although Maquette takes the concept less literally than the aforementioned game did.Īt first, everything seems normal. In all likelihood, I wouldn’t have been able to figure out some of the tougher things otherwise, but I’ll get to that aspect in a bit. It’s a puzzle game that can actually be surprisingly difficult. But the game isn’t a walking simulator, even if it does have some sections that qualify as such. There’s no getting around that the story in Maquette is its best feature. I felt my eyes roll at how perfect both he and Kenzie appeared in earlier plot sections, only for the game to hit close to home once it made its goals more clear. We go along for the ride as we see the romantic tides ebb and flow, and we’re right there with him to feel the all-too-familiar sting of detachment once things inevitably start to turn. The plot begins when he finds a sketchbook he shared with his ex, Kenzie, which results in him taking a hard look at their relationship and what it meant to him.

Maquette takes place from the perspective of a man named Michael. However, there’s a depth of emotion in this highly relatable tale that will stay with me far longer than some of its clunkier puzzles. The signposting can be quite rough, and the early story sequences are a bit too saccharine.

Maquette is a narrative-focused first-person puzzler built around manipulating objects at various sizes to find solutions. That sense of loss is universal, but I can’t recall any games attempting to replicate it. Many of us have likely felt the lurching dread that accompanies the transition from a rollercoaster honeymoon period to a relationship that simply doesn’t quite work.

Superliminal game length