It’s great that puzzle games do something like decompression and bring everyday life into problem solving, and A Little Left Side is the latest to adopt that atmosphere. The goal in each of its more than 75 stages is to clean up. Put things that belong together in the same box. Organize items by size. Be solved. It’s mellow…that is, until it throws at you a series of tedious or frustrating episodes.
premise in A Little Left Side is feeling like, at least initially, you’re cleaning around the house. Stages tend to involve household or recognizable items that are skewed. It’s up to you to look at what’s in front of you, then determine how to arrange them.
All in all, it’s a pretty straightforward process. When a phase starts, you will see objects ahead. They all follow some sort of theme. Your goal is to see what connects them and allows you to put them together in an orderly fashion. Maybe that means following the patterns. It might involve checking for state and size. Cleaning up anything can help. There’s a place for everything, and A Little Left Side is about finding that. You need to go through them in order, because choosing a particular level does not allow you to move on to later chapters. But after you unlock a game, you can come back to play it again, or you can try to find an additional solution from time to time. There are also some daily quizzes to challenge. If someone has a problem, you can ask for a hint for help. There is also no penalty for “let it be” and skip that stage. There are no scores, timers or penalties in sight.
However, there is a cat. An unseen cat stalks you A Little Left Side, see (and possibly measure) your progress through the puzzle game. It won’t make its presence known on every level, but it can pop up. When it happens, it will wipe out the items, ruining your work. Though sometimes, the cat isn’t even a villain. It’s an anti-hero scatter item so you can see, “Hey! There’s another stamp under that stack of books!” It’s a new mechanic that sets the game apart, adding to the atmosphere.
As part of its aesthetic, A Little Left Side not related to any text. Unless you go to the menu to ask for a hint or “leave it” to move on to the next puzzle, things will be wordless. It’s great for accessibility, but it’s also bad for it sometimes. Many puzzles are obvious. If you receive items of a certain size or color, you know they need to be ordered or grouped together. However, the goal is not always clear! Even suggestions involve wordless pictures, which can sometimes obscure solutions. For example, nothing tells you that accents like pencil shavings are movable and considered “messy”. That means “deleting” them by dragging them off the screen is necessary. Except you might not realize it for a few minutes. It feels like a forced slowness. Overall, it’s fun and light, but that makes the times when it’s a bit too raw or out there stand out.
For example, I find reliance on faint tones or precise positioning both a bit annoying. That’s another quirk that holds A Little Left Side become a really accessible puzzle game. When an item enters a position or possible location, there will be a small chime. If the volume isn’t loud enough — or someone has hearing problems — you might miss out. Since there are puzzles where pinpointing the exact location is important, that can be a problem! It gets even worse when you come across a puzzle like the one involving boxes and containers at the end of chapter two. You can put them in the right place, but otherwise exactlyit will not register as correct.
another thing about A Little Left Side is that it ranges from the pointless level to the level that may seem confusing at first. The first three chapters tend to be extremely clear, to the point where you only need to move a few blatant sections around. Then, as you prepare to move into the fourth chapter, things begin. That’s when the point is reached where if a puzzle is a challenge, A Little Left Side can really feel like you’re looking for a vague solution. (Even some of the puzzles in the third chapter near the end confused me.) Also, while an occasional puzzle would offer two or three choices, it didn’t feel as free as the premise did. declare.
A Little Left Side is a nice puzzle game to play when you need to take some time to sort things out. It allows you to take a moment to calmly sort things out, perhaps rearranging your thoughts. I wish its levels felt a little more balanced. There are quite a few tasks that look like memorization, as well as some puzzles with seemingly implausible solutions. At least there’s always the option to “let it go” and move on.
A Little Left Side available on computer and Nintendo Switch.
