Review Unravel-ed

Coldwood presents Unravel, published by Electronic Arts, a game I thought would be as immersive as Limbo or Inside which it was not, but grabbed my attention and respect with its splendour in certain aspects of the game. 

You are a character made up of yarn who quite literally does the job of taking us through one. The story is of an old lady, the owner of the house with the player character being the medium of its unfolding. The anthropomorphic creature Yarny (let’s call him that) weaves through different environments which are the haven to the moments we uncover. There are varied scenarios in the story, each having their own set of nuances to be figured out and used to the instantly likeable Yarny’s advantage.

The story, as it seemed to me revolves around the life of the old lady, from childhood to old age, from playing with sibling to protecting a beloved forest of the community against industrialization and to death of a loved one. We see her flipping through a photo album, the photos of which we unlock by visiting those times through photo frames put up in the house. At the end of each level you find a badge commemorating the respective memory which you attach to the album cover. The game starts with positive, sunny and beautiful looking environments but is soon with progress, filled with grim and dull nature of the corresponding memory. Backyard, sea-shores, hiking on mountains lead to industrialized toxic and disastrous areas. The game in many ways completes a cycle of life starting from the childhood of the old lady to the beginning of it, the latter hinted through old lady’s grandchildren. The fact that Yarny starts and ends on same happy and pleasing environment via the appalling middle goes to justify the above statement. The dark theme seems to mellow down through and to the snow based environment probably signifying the coldness of life or death where the protagonist completely unravels. That being said, Unravel is open to interpretation as nothing is said or defined and is what you make of it. The story is simple but can often be a bit difficult to grasp until the end with Yarny doing a fine job of helping us untangle it.

The game is quite simple and easy to understand with its limited but adequate number of actions to be performed which are introduced nicely. Yarny can throw his fibres to grab onto hooks to swing, pull an object or make a trampoline/slingshot by connecting two hooks. All the puzzles require the twines, left behind as you travel. The puzzles are evocative and many a times unpredictable and obscure. Some of them need you to die one or multiple times no matter how quick your reflexes are. This occasionally got frustrating and made me want to quit. Perform a task haphazardly and you will run out of fibre leaving a basic framework of Yarny, making you go back and correct your path. To mitigate this, find the optimal path and you will collect some yarn balls which are aptly placed and serves as checkpoints for the game. This is a nifty mechanic which made me think in an eclectic manner while solving puzzles. Often the checkpoints are placed closed by, so if by mistake you happen to arrive at the latter one first and then former one, you are stuck. I was in a fix in one of the levels and I could either restart the level or had to reload from the mistaken checkpoint. I had to take the highway which nullified the point of this checkpoint load feature. Other than these, each level has its own dynamic addition with things like crabs, soda cans, alphabet blocks, pine cones turning into snow balls and more in relation to the nature of the environment. Each of these can be used in different ways to progress through the level. There are occasional exciting chase sequences and rides like flying on kites, fish, plastic bag, wooden logs etc. This hypes up the dipped motivation caused due to gradual monotony of long levels. There was no appropriate reward or achievement to balance out the time and dedication spent on the lengthy levels. The only achievement is the discovery of the photographs of the moments we find in our journey through each level which  did not satiate me.

The look of the game is where it truly hits jackpot. The beaches, the leaves, the grass, water, snow, the sunlit areas, the toxic light-radiating waste and everything looks marvellous. Yarny looks splendid and adorable with simple and cute character animations. Shivering in rain, clearing off water or snow, getting up confused after falling down, all make him expressive enough to connect and maintain that connection with the player. The game looks and feels great and I admired the sheer beauty of it every time I played it.

There is a variety of soundtracks throughout the memories we explore, more or less having the same pleasing effect. The music at the house of the old lady was reminiscent of the soundtrack of Braid to me with a certain degree of softness to it. It is soothing at first but it soon became a noise to me thanks to the duration of the levels and the frustration of certain puzzles. The pacing changes complimenting the pace of the game at times like rides or reflexive sequences. It is consistent and maintains a sense of equilibrium with the aura of the respective theme.

Unravel is a wonderfully rich experience taking us through an exquisite emotional journey which doesn’t leave much of an impact but has a light- hearted “oh..” lingering to it. Perhaps, at least reaching the surface of the water of the well if not the bottom. Here the play is the retrospect of the narrative and blends well into the present. It outperforms in its aesthetic and sound department accompanying with its intuitive and meek gameplay. It gets a well-deserving 7 out of 10.