Played Is This Seat Taken?
I wrote about Is This Seat Taken? previously when I played it as a Steam Next Fest demo, but I finally played the final release. It's very cute!
All the puzzles in the game involve arranging people so that they are seated near one another according to their preferences. Some people want to be alone; others want to be near a certain kind of person, or near a specific person.
Some people have an aversion to strong scents, while some people have an aversion only to bad scents, or only to cologne. Some people need to be near their backpack. Every level seems to introduce a new quality that affects character placement, or a new thing to consider, unique to that level only. Here's a level where you need to load both people and luggage onto a train:
I think I was most impressed by how frequently the game added new, level-specific puzzle elements. It's a pretty short game, and if you're good at logic puzzles, you'll probably blow through the first 20 or so puzzles very, very quickly. In exchange for being short, it gains the laudable quality of being very, very dense with twists on its own format - you will see many different twists per hour spent here. Which is delightful.
The game has a story, but I found it pretty dull. I understand why a game like this needs a story... but I don't think it needs a good story. Plenty of games need the lubrication of a story without really needing that story to be memorable... which is something I have tried and failed to write about on this blog before, actually! I decided that I enjoyed the puzzles enough to not care very much about whether the story was any good. I recommend that you play it the same way.
As a kid, I had an entire book of "grid" format logic puzzles, where a series of clues would help you figure out who sat next to whom around a banquet table, or in what order a group of people arrived at a party, or something. This isn't exactly the same thing as what this game is doing... but it's adjacent. I find this kind of puzzle very nostalgic and comforting. This game isn't quite long enough to match up to that book. Really, I came away from it just wanting to find a book like that again! But I didn't regret playing it. This is definitely the kind of puzzle game I'd feel comfortable getting for a family member who doesn't play many videogames - it is very kind and gentle, very easy to understand, and very good at being precisely what it is trying to be.
Besides, airport bookstores don't seem to sell that kind of logic puzzle book very often anymore - and I think the best ones I ever got were all from airport bookstores. A shame!!! So much of my childhood experience with puzzles centered around disposable puzzle activity books that we bought from gas stations, airport bookstores, and rest stops next to highways. Alas!! Another thing that smartphones have taken from us!!!!