A little to the left puts your house in order

A little to the left ensures that you find order in everyday household items. You solve puzzles to restore order, and yet you have to deal with the chaotic power of a cat that likes to mess things up.

The puzzle game is coming soon from publisher Secret Mode and developer Max Inferno, which consists of the duo Annie Macmillan and Lukas Steinman. They have come up with puzzles that they find in everyday objects in their home in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

The game is somewhat reminiscent of Unpacking and brings out the compulsive organizer in you as you try to match or put items in order, be it a set of paintings, plates, pencils or a pile of written items. notes. Macmillan and Steinman showed the game during the Summer Game Fest demos in June, and their puzzles have stuck in my head.

A pandemic game

“It was basically born out of the pandemic and being stuck at home,” Steinman said. “The inspiration is very much our house and our cat. We were home a lot. And we were very aware that we had gotten a little out of hand with what was going on. And we controlled our own environment, the space we could control. But then we also live with a rambunctious cat. We’d set things up the way we want them to be, and wake up in the morning, and they’d be scattered all over the house. We just thought that was a really fun back and forth that we had.”

They started working on the game for a game jam. The theme at the game jam was “out of control”. So they imagined someone “wanted to control an environment as a way to deal with anxiety,” Macmillan said.

“That’s something I can relate to,” she said. “When I’m anxious, I fiddle with things or make things up. That was the main source of inspiration. While looking around the house, we started in the middle of the pandemic, looking for inspiration for puzzles in everyday objects, but also objects that have meaning for us in the house.”

And then there was the rebellious cat, which disturbed the order—something Macmillan likes because cats aren’t trained.

While people say it reminds them of Unpacking, Macmillan said they weren’t thinking about other games when they were making it.

“I’ve always been a fan of environmental story games, like Myst and Riven, where you walk around, and like you’re always looking for meaning in objects,” she said. “But that wasn’t in our consciousness when we made it.”

Gameplay

All you do in the game is organize some household items. A mischievous cat brings chaos into your home, figuring out the puzzles to solve and the mess to clean up. The Unity-based title is coming to PC and Nintendo Switch and will debut on iOS and Android later.

The game will ship with dozens of puzzles sometime this year, and the developers hope to make updates in the form of The Daily Tidy Delivery. Every day it takes an existing, handcrafted puzzle from the main campaign of A Little to the Left and is re-scrambled for a completely new twist; one that is unique to you. Each player gets a one-time puzzle every 24 hours. It is procedurally made.

For example, a Daily Tidy puzzle, based on the campaign’s Spice Jars level, will mix up the jar’s shapes, sizes, lids, contents, and background colors. No two variations of The Daily Tidy Delivery, even those based on the same puzzle type, will be the same. Players who log in every day can relax with a unique cleanup just for them. Players should also keep their eyes peeled for special seasonal puzzles.

Regular Cleaners will unlock special badges to celebrate their cumulative achievements in The Daily Tidy Delivery, but as we know life can get in the way sometimes, A Little to the Left won’t ask players to build big daily streaks to complete them. to deserve.

Each puzzle comes with multiple ways to solve it. You can get a quick fix and earn a star, or you can come up with the perfection fix and get multiple stars. It has atmospheric sound design and uses drag and drop environmental stories. Overall, it’s quite a creative yet simple piece of work that will make your brain work in new ways.

“We’ve always loved puzzle games, and we’ve also loved very accessible games and games with fast gameplay loops,” Steinman said. “We like being able to sit down and really be immersed in a game, but we also appreciate a game that you can sit and play with for 15 minutes.”

“We call it a fun puzzle game where you tidy up the house. And there’s a cat that occasionally interferes with your tidying up a little bit and lurks on the fringes of your periphery,” Macmillan said. “There are two main behaviors at play that are opposite to each other. One is structure and organization, the other is chaos and rebellious behavior.”

They’ve been working on it for a year and a half and it’s their first game to work together.

“I come from a conceptual art background and have an art practice. It’s not really game related. But I am interested in new media and installation. I do animation and art illustration,” Macmillan said.

And Steinman is a software developer with a background in robotics. He has long been interested in video game interaction and made experimental games as a hobbyist. They started working on the game and applied for the Day of the Devs event and were accepted.

They debuted the game at the Wholesome Direct event last year and received great feedback on the concept.

“That gave us the confidence to go through with it and get it into full production,” Steinman said. “We had played with a few prototypes, and this was one that was very close to us. So we were really happy to see the reaction.”

The game is modular and the developers have no shortage of ideas to expand it.

There is actually a storyline that comes through in your relationships with your cat. It’s an unspoken story, although it’s a mistake to say the game is story-driven. The game changes over time and the environment changes.

“The game is very much about observation, and there are hidden little narrative bits in it,” Steinman said.