![]() If this was a single dungeon within a mediocre Legend of Zelda game, that game would win game of the year a decade ago. If anything, the game feels incomplete, like brilliance was stumbled upon by people who can’t design puzzles. Between Maquette’s highs and lows, no other rating feels more correct, even though this one doesn’t feel correct, either. In my rating system, 2 stars represents an average, C rank game. If there are real people in California like this, I hope they die before I meet them. It is so bad and played so completely straight my brain implodes trying to imagine what kind of person thought this would be of interest to anyone, much less relatable, much less of any emotional worth, enough to record multiple minutes worth of spoken dialog. To call it pretentious does not convey nearly enough contempt. The writing is the most twee, saccharine, vapid, shallow, privileged, infuriatingly juvenile “romance” story I have encountered in an indie game yet. What cratered the game for me from “disappointing” to “bad enough to derisively mock with my friends” was the truly atrocious unrelated romance story that serves as the “reward” for advancing the levels. The genuinely brilliant puzzle solutions were so distended by mush I discounted them as possibilities because my opinion of the game’s creativity sank so low in the valleys between the modest highs. There just isn’t the complexity present promised by the premise. The proper levels still limit the number of objects used to one or two at a time, and there’s severe gatekeeping to guide the player towards what part of the diorama to examine next. Unfortunately, not every level uses this recursion mechanic properly, and others are bloated with vaguely-related but still generic puzzle solving. I normally maintain we, as a species, have met our quota of Alice in Wonderland themed media, but I would allow an exception in this case. The same physical key can be shrunk to unlock a door within the diorama, or enlarged to be used as a bridge. ![]() This means you can change the size of objects by moving them between recursions, or explore at different senses of scale by venturing forward yourself. Every level has a diorama of the level within it, and any object you place within the model is moved proportionally outside of it. Maquette’s base concept of recursive level design feels like it could be as good as thinking with Portals. If another team took a crack at this game’s recursive level puzzle concept, we’d have a 3D contender for brain-melting goodness on par with Baba is You. Maquette makes it possible by twisting the world into itself recursively in an MC Escher-esque fashion. This enters the hall of fame of indie games with great concepts in great trailers that failed to disclose the trailer had the one good execution of that great concept. Maquette is a first-person recursive puzzle game that takes you into a world where every building, plant, and object are simultaneously tiny and staggeringly huge.
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