Unpacking Cheats and Tips
Minutes Will Turn Into Hours
The premise of Unpacking is fairly simple: unpack boxes of things into the rooms available to you to finish a level. But as you take each item out of the boxes, you’ll find yourself caught up on tiny details that bring nostalgia, happiness, sadness, and an entire array of emotions you never thought you could get from unpacking a virtual room.
The mix of the game’s adorable graphics, as well as the attention to detail in the game’s sound department, will also immerse you into the experience of moving. Placing items on different surfaces creates different sounds, the little victory audio byte when you’re done with a room, and the game’s overall relaxing music is more than enough to keep you unpacking for hours.
The Boxes Aren’t Perfect
If you’ve ever had to move and pack up, you’ll know that the process of organizing your belongings into boxes is both a tiring but also messy experience. Try as you might, there will always be some stray items in boxes that don’t belong.
This is shown in Unpacking as well, where boxes in each room consist of items mainly dedicated for that area, but sometimes you’ll find a stray. Whether it’s a singular shoe, a random spice, or a keyboard that definitely should not have been packed with kitchen utensils, the little mix-ups in boxes add a new depth of realism and human error to the game.
There Are “Right” And “Wrong” Spots
The puzzle aspect of Unpacking only shows itself when everything is taken out of their boxes and placed somewhere in the world. With an audio cue that marks the end of your unpacking session, you move into the organizing section of the game. Items will flash red if they aren’t placed in an area that doesn’t line up with the game’s predetermined “logic” of where the items should be placed.
For some, this is a nice puzzle to figure out just where exactly the game wants you to place certain things, but for some, this comes more as an annoyance. If you want to play the game without the worry of “right” or “wrong” placement, you can easily toggle the “allow items anywhere” option to remove the puzzle element and progress as usual.
A Little Bit Of A Guessing Game
One of the beauties of Unpacking is its minimal amounts of text, which means less reading and more doing. A result of this, however, is that there aren’t any labels for the items you pick up, so sometimes you’ll be confused by what this blob of pixels you just picked up really is.
This is where Unpacking becomes a slight guessing game. Oftentimes, you’ll recognize what exactly it is you picked up, after all, a computer from the ’90s is fairly hard to not recognize, but sometimes you won’t be able to tell. At these moments, just have the item in your hand and hover over different surfaces, and sometimes the change in angle or placement will be just enough to let you know what it is you’re holding.
