Unravel Review

[asdasdads Prince]

As my eight-inch Yarny doll hung for dear life on a thread of wool, swinging his way across the dark underbelly of a seaside pier, my immediate thoughts were not concerned with his well-being. I was instead overcome with nostalgia. There’s something incurably wistful about the sounds of seaside that always seems to lure out childhood memories.

Reminiscence is Unravel's defining quality. I'm not the type who goes weak at the sight of a floating plastic bag, but at the conclusion of this eight-hour adventure, I was moved by what it was communicating about my past. Its message is an uncomplicated, naked truth, powerful in its simplicity.

Deliberately throughout, Unravel tries to kick loose memories submerged at the ocean bed of your mind--those you treasure, those that still hurt, those that are both--and asks you to let go of them again. Not easy, no, but helpful. It does this by looking through its own backstory, at pictures of its past, through scenes and moments that you’ll likely relate to.

Hence the seaside level. The lazy afternoon in the back garden level. The cold and drizzly trip through the woods level. An identical Xerox of your life this is not, nor does it need to be. Unravel is more like an aroma you remember but can't quite put a time or place to. The memories it conjures are inexact yet poignant.

Otherwise it's a fairly standard puzzle-platformer, mechanically at least. Yarny, our accident-prone, panicky hero made of wool, overcomes puzzles and obstacles by fashioning tools from his skin of string. But if you're curious about Unravel simply because you want to test your frontal lobe and thumb reflexes, this game will come off as solid but unspectacular. It isn't The Witness or N++.

In a manner similar to Mario 64's castle paintings, Unravel's dozen levels are entered via framed photos dotted around an elderly lady's home. Whereas Nintendo's seminal platformer transports you to fantasy worlds of Goombas and Chain Chomps, here each picture sends you to what appears to be the time and place they were snapped in. Somewhere along the backgrounds of these 12 landscapes you'll find the subjects of each photograph, suspended in eternal camera poses, assembled in a towering glitter of fairylight. If real life has blessed you with happy memories of your own, you will see yourself in some of these photos, and it will ache.

Physicists among you; please don't ruin your evening trying to make sense of the level-to-level objectives. At the end of each world, Yarny collects a knitted badge that, when returning back to the elderly lady's home in the present day, he places onto an empty scrapbook, thus po[CENSORED]ting it with photos from within each memory. Schrodinger sends his regards.

How you reach each level’s finishing-line is the meat of the dish. Yarny is no taller than a wine glass and certainly more fragile, and it’s these drawbacks which amplify the challenge of something as simple as walking across a back garden. He is adorably useless, insofar as he can't swim or talk or punch or duck or back-flip or any of the arbitrary qualities of Mario and co. As he meanders through each world, Yarny's body unravels (think trail of breadcrumbs) which means if he walks too far he is reduced to a gaunt wireframe, tethered to the spot, tugging on his remaining stretch of string. Balls of wool, scattered throughout each world, must be routinely collected to replenish Yarny's ever-thinning body, and on occasion you'll also need to backtrack and simplify his trail in order to free up some slack.

But Yarny's weakness is also his strength. His party trick is throwing a lasso of string out from his arm, Spider-Man style, which allows him to climb over rocks, abseil down trees, and swing across perilous puddles of rainwater. Conveniently, each level is dotted with knots of wool that Yarny can attach his string to, thus creating a range of tools from rope bridges to trampolines. Most obstacles, certainly from the second level onwards, demand a mixture of these tools fashioned in the correct order.

Trailer (1:43) :