Recursive Puzzler ‘Maquette’ Never Achieves an Emotional Awakening

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#1

A monumental dome which curves like the sky and a jewel-encrusted key shrunk to a speck on the ground; these are images wrought from the high concept of first-person puzzle game Maquette. At the center of its picture-book world, I can see a microcosm of my surroundings, the maquette from which the game derives its title. Everything that appears in the regular-sized setting is replicated in the model version, but if I place an object from one into the other, it becomes either giant or tiny. This is how I solve the game’s puzzles which play out like a dance of size and space, perspective and reality. Often, Maquette, which is out now on PlayStation consoles and PC, feels like a hall of mirrors turned on its side, reflecting infinitesimally up and down, as far as my brain can imagine. 

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dy8b8j/maquette-annapurna-review
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#2

I haven’t touched the game yet, but damn, this is an extremely good piece of games criticism.

#3

Yeah, I really liked this piece. I watched Glass House Games stream the game a couple of days ago, and my big takeaway was the recursive object shenanigans you can get into are real cool, some of the puzzles were a bit too finnicky, the music interludes were interesting if not always executed perfectly, and the story could either be interesting as long as it avoid many of the regular tropes. It kinda sounds like it didn’t which is unfortunate, but I’ll likely pick it up given just how strong the mechanical premise it for me