The story of a life is told through objects in Unpacking

I ought to be used to moving house, having lived in six homes over the past decade. Yet somehow each time I move, I find myself ambushed by what an emotional experience it is to parcel my life into boxes and say goodbye to a place I called home. Unpacking is a new game that explores the intimate relationships we develop with the objects in our lives and the melancholy of moving on; this thoughtful puzzle game has proved a surprise hit in recent weeks. 

There are no dramatic setpieces in Unpacking, no characters, barely even any words. But there is stuff in abundance — boxes and boxes of it — and it’s your job to take out each object one by one and find a place where it belongs. It’s not about ruthlessly pruning possessions, Marie Kondo-style, but rather about caring for them and contemplating their meaning. The game arrives among a series of recent titles that turn activities which many consider unwelcome chores into satisfying puzzle games, but it stands apart when it blossoms into a sensitive meditation on life’s transitions.

Each level of Unpacking is a new house filled with boxes waiting to be unpacked. These are not simply disconnected scenarios: they tell the story of a single woman’s life through the places where she lives over 20 years. We begin in a child’s bedroom, and the first objects drawn from the boxes are unsurprising: board games, colouring pencils, football trophies, cuddly toys. Though we never see the owner of these objects, we learn about her through the things she carries with her — art supplies show that she is creatively inclined, a dreidel that she’s Jewish, souvenirs from France and Italy indicate a love of travel. 

After every object has been unpacked in the child’s bedroom, we jump forward in time to the protagonist’s next home, a narrow bedroom in a university dormitory, then later to a shared house where her possessions must jostle for space with the knicknacks of her flatmates. You can’t help but start to construct a mental picture of this woman and her friends as each character is delicately articulated via their possessions, from the vibrant wigs and mannequins of a costume-making flatmate to the cold, joyless decor of the bad-news-boyfriend the protagonist moves in with next. 

Put an object in an obviously wrong place, like a shoe in the shower, and you won’t be able to progress to the next level

All this subtle environmental storytelling would count for little if the game wasn’t fun to play, but Unpacking provides compelling gameplay over its brief four-hour runtime. The game allows you a degree of creativity in defining your character by how you place each object — does she keep her pyjamas in the drawer or tucked under the pillow? Is the cuddly toy stationed proudly on the bed or shoved in a cupboard? Yet as the houses get bigger, you must strategically find space for everything using whatever domestic Tetris logic is at your disposal. Put an object in an obviously wrong place, like a shoe in the shower, and you won’t be able to progress to the next level. Story beats are cleverly woven into this system: in the boyfriend’s bachelor pad, there is no place for our heroine’s diploma on the wall so it must be hidden, poignantly, under the bed.

Unpacking understands that there is something inherently satisfying about organising and tidying, especially when there is no manual labour involved. It sits alongside other surprise successes such as PowerWash Simulator, with its myriad jet nozzles and types of grime, renovation simulator House Flipper and its historical companion WW2 Rebuilder, and the smart Viscera Cleanup Detail, which asks players to mop up the gore following the kinds of alien battles that are routine in countless action games. These games respond to a rising desire for games which are low-impact and relaxing, a mould Unpacking fits snugly with its gorgeous pixel art and soothing synth soundtrack. A player review on gaming platform Steam expresses this colourfully: “Unpacking is like sinking into a memory foam mattress after spending a lifetime on a bed of iron.” 

There is a degree of serendipity to Unpacking’s success, as Covid-related delays to some of the season’s big hitters have opened space for its rise to prominence. This attention is fully deserved, for it is a game of great warmth, intimacy and originality. It’s impossible to play it and not reflect on your own passage through various homes and the seemingly insignificant possessions which together make up a life. It asks us to look at the things we hold dear; those we carry with us, and those we leave behind.