Assemble with Care, because not everything comes with an instruction manual.
I’ve been looking for some relaxing games to play and this one has been on my wishlist for a hot minute and I do enjoy me some puzzles games, and this offers a twist in the sense that puzzles are objects you have to take apart and put together again.
I’m happy to say it sort of exceeded my expectations.
- Casual
- Emotional
- Family Friendly
- Hand-drawn
- Indie
- Point & Click
- Puzzle
- Simulation
- Singleplayer
- Visual Novel
Where can you buy?
- Available on Humble Bundle
- Available on Google Play
Pros:
- Continuous storyline
- Fun projects
- Great voice acting
Cons:
- Are we getting paid?
- Instructions a bit lacking
- Same artwork
- Level 7 seems bugged
Explanation to Negative Feedback
Are we getting paid?
Obviously in our first chapter we didn’t get paid but in little doo-dads from the girl, and then the coffee shop lady didn’t have any money because she had to call her sister for funds, so I have to ask…did we get paid for anything we did besides everyone’s gratitude?
I mean, fixing things is our job, right?
And it’s great to do things for free, but some of this stuff was like…a bit more intense than just y’know, changing batteries.
Maybe we did get paid, but because that wasn’t really the whole point in fixing things, it just wasn’t shown? Which I can understand that.
Instructions a bit lacking
There were some chapters during the game, level 7 specifically, where I just wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do in order to piece things back together. At least one of these problems came from the fact that I didn’t know that I could remove the connectors.
Like, I would pull them away from the area and try to connect them elsewhere, but I never pulled them far enough away to disconnect them fully.
Due to that, I was stupidly confused on how to get the connectors of the bad parts onto the gameboy device, since they were all clearly needed. I took way too much time on that level due to how infuriatingly difficult it was not knowing how to get those things off.
Aside from that, the rotation is a bit weird, and I kept clicking too far from the item making it go back to its original spot instead of in front of me.
And at the start where we put the suitcase in front of us, I thought that was supposed to do something.
I didn’t know that I had to manually do things once it’s in front of me until the narrator stated she needed to unlock the latches. It seems such a simple thing to realize, but it’s really not for anyone who’s not played these kinds of games before.
Same artwork
I personally love the artwork for the game. It’s simplistic and painterly, but I really wish there was more variety to what we look at. I can understand why some scenes are the same, but for others, I wish there was a bit more variety to how the characters looked.
For instance when the sister was helping with serving customers at the cafe, I wish there was an image to mimic that instead of her in her casual stance like many other moments she appeared before us.
Level 7 seems bugged
Okay, so I really like the gameboy’s musical soundtrack, but it would not shut up even when I didn’t fix it properly. In fact, I took the damn batteries out to make it stop and it still sang that little jangle, which drove me absolutely crazy.
I backed out of the level and came back in, thinking maybe it was a bug, but it was still the same problem. Once it started, it would keep going until I actually fixed the sound properly.
I don’t think that’s how a console works.
I’m pretty sure once you take the batteries out, the sound shouldn’t continue.
Explanation to Positive Feedback
Continuous storyline
I’ll admit, before I started playing the game, I thought it was just going to offer up different levels on things to piece together; I didn’t know there was an actual storyline to it, and a bit of an emotional one at that.
When it did turn out to be a bit of a visual novel and characters came into play, I then thought that maybe each chapter would have us meeting someone new and fixing something for them, but again it came as a surprise that it kept to two different families and the problems they were kind of facing as a festival would soon be arriving.
Fun projects
I enjoyed the variety of items that we got to fix, and one of them we even did without any actual knowledge on how to really piece it together, due to being the character that we were. I mean, for the most part they all seemed a bit easier due to the main character being a fixer of things, but once we were out of the picture, it felt a bit more nerve-wrecking even though we were doing exactly what we’d been doing the whole game.
It’s interesting how going from one perspective to another can kind of mess with your mind in that sense.
But yeah, I liked the projects, some were more tedious than others, and that’s fine seeing as nobody wants one thing after another to be simple fixes.
Great voice acting
The main narrator’s voice sounds like the same person that narrated the storyline of Beacon Pines.
The fact that we’re given multiple characters and they each have their own voice actor was really nice. A lot of these games you just expect silence going in and a quiet read, but that wasn’t the case. Everyone did a very good job.
Links Worth Checking Out
- Nothing here
Achievements
- A Fix in Time
- Call Me
- Coffee Break
- Everything is Illuminated
- Game Over
- Goodnight, My Darling
- Hello, Master Chef
- Life Through a Lens
- Only a Phonecall Away
- Slide Away
- Statue of Limitations
- Thank You for the Music
- Turning the Tables
- Welcome to Bellariva