izigame.me

A Little to the Left is a wonderfully charming puzzle game, made especially for those who take great joy in organizing things. It can be frustrating in quite a few of the puzzles, but it’s an overall enjoyable and very relaxing experience!
“A little to the left” is both a phrase that I hear way too often when helping my mom change furniture around in her house, which she does at least once every couple of months, and the name of an incredibly charming little puzzle game made by a two person team called Max Inferno.
I know I joked about the whole furniture thing, but honestly, I’m pretty sure that precise scenario is where the developer got the name of the game from. You see, the game is all about organizing things, with the very first level being all about fixing a picture that needs to be tilted just a little to the left. I see what you did there, devs! Honestly, I love the name of the game. It fits.
But what DOES it fit into, exactly? What is the full package? Well, A little to the left is a puzzle game that consists mostly of organizing things. You have a level select screen with over 75 quick levels that give you a variety of objects that you need to organize within whatever frame the level provides you with. If you get a bunch of books side by side, for example, you’ll know you’ll probably have to shift the books around to organize them in a way that makes sense, be it by size, cover design, whatever. On another level, you’re given stickers to apply to a calendar, or stamps to apply to letters. Whatever the case, the levels usually have a pattern, something to nudge you in the right direction, and it’s up to you to find out what you have to do. But do take note of the fact I said usually, because unfortunately, it’s not always like this.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2886559479
See, while quite a few of the puzzles are very intuitive, some of them… aren’t. The worst were the ones that just gave me an empty space and a bunch of objects. In those, you’re supposed to arrange the objects in the right way, except as far as I can tell, there’s only one way to find out the correct arrangement, and that’s via trial and error. And that’s not just me saying, quite a few of the reviews are in the same boat as me, which is the I-sometimes-find-it-hard-to-tell-what-goes-where boat. The game does try to alleviate this by having a kind of a snap effect to an object when you put it in the right place, along with a DING sound that plays, but for me, that was simply too inconsistent to rely on.
Thankfully, though, the game has a handy hint feature, which I unashamedly used for all the levels I found unintuitive. Well, I say hint because that’s the name in the game, but the truth is the hint is actually the entire answer of the puzzle, but it’s displayed in a way that can be a hint. It’s quite brilliant, really. Let me explain. The answer is basically written in a notebook, but scribbled over. You can get an eraser and erase all the scribbles, which reveal the puzzle’s answer. However, if you only want a hint, you can choose to erase just part of the scribbles, and reveal just a bit of the answer. This way, the player has full control over how much help they want, and I find that to be pretty cool.
The game also has multiple solutions for some puzzles, which are shown via a star system. Basically, you complete a puzzle and you get a star. However, if you complete a puzzle and you see there are two or more stars to get, that means there is another solution to your level. Just like with the puzzles, the solutions can also be unintuitive sometimes. However, in this case, not even the hint will help you, as the hint only shows you the answer to one of the solutions. The rest is on you. While I do enjoy the star system that easily shows you the number of solutions a puzzle has, the game doesn’t actually explain this anywhere. It doesn’t really explain much of anything at all, in fact. In a game as simple as this, in which you play by clicking and dragging your mouse, that’s mostly okay, but this fact can generate some confusion in some areas, such as the stars. I’ve seen players for example who thought these stars were ratings, and that they were being too slow/doing something wrong.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2886559204
In terms of story, there isn’t really one, and that’s okay. This is a very casual puzzle experience made especially for people who are really into organizing their spaces. If you finish all the content of this game and want more, fret not: the game does have a daily puzzle system, so at least once a day you can hop back in and do that. In this vein, the game is very relaxing. The graphics are adorable and very cozy, with a soundtrack that feels at times upbeat and at times like a warm hug. The game is very good at making you feel like your worries are melting away… if you don’t get frustrated at some of the puzzles.
While I did enjoy my time with A Little to the Left, I do believe this game isn’t going to be for everyone. For me, the puzzles varied wildly in quality, with the best ones being very intuitive and a nice challenge in figuring out how to accomplish your objective, and the worst ones being the ones in which you have no idea nor clue what you’re even meant to do, or, even worse, the empty space ones in which you know what you have to do but have no way to tell which object goes where in the game’s preferred organization. Thankfully, I found more intuitive puzzles than I found the other type, but there were still many more of the latter than I think should have been.
If you think you’re okay with this caveat I mentioned, then you’ll probably find this game very relaxing, much in the vein of Unpacking, if you played that. But if you tend to get frustrated when a game wants a different solution than your perfectly valid one, or upon feeling that a puzzle might be unfair… then it might be best for you to steer clear of this title. For me, I had a good time, even with the frustration. Certainly commendable work, especially for a 2 person team. If you do pick up the game, I do hope you enjoy it. And if you want to talk about the game, I’m always down to chat! You can find me just a little to your left. … I’m so sorry. I’m actually probably thousands of kilometers away but I really wanted to make the joke.
This review is also available in video format over on my youtube channel! You can check it out on the link below!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDTaOcfanrc