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A beautiful story told in a childish way
The gameplay itself is curious, but ultimately not at all challenging. As someone who enjoys tinkering with things, taking out screws and putting them back together is hardly a test of skill, especially when the game seems to hold your hand at every opportunity, giving you only one place to put things and often pointing it out directly. When I did get stuck, it was usually because the mechanism didn't actually reflect the one I'm familiar with in real life, or because the 3D orbiting controls were awkward and made it difficult to see or interact with parts. The broken or burned out components don't really make sense within the game world either. How do you break a bell on a rotary phone? And the fact that the extra parts always just happen to be there when you need them feels odd.
Sure, the tinkering and experimenting elements are present, but they feel so small and simple that they're not particularly satisfying. It's enough if all you want is a short moment of simple, tactile play, but it seems like such a wasted opportunity to challenge the player to diagnose and resolve problems like an actual repairwoman would. Instead, you're simply handed all the parts with basic instructions and told to take things apart and put them back together. It lacks what makes repairing things genuinely interesting and rewarding.
The story is cute, but far too on the nose. I don't mind the idea of the repairwoman fixing things as a metaphor for people repairing their relationships, but does the narration really need to call it out explicitly at every step? There are plenty of moments where things are nicely implied by narrative framing, only to be spelled out in the very next phrase. Why not leave the player a bit of room to think through the comparison and draw their own conclusions?
I think that's my overall problem with this game. As cute, quaint, and playful as it is, it doesn't respect the player's autonomy. It's not so much a game as a children's novella. Everything feels forced, obvious, and explicitly pointed out. The player is never given a chance to explore, experiment, or consider what's actually going on. For a game centred around the theme of repairing things, we're never given a chance to diagnose and problem solve. For a game whose narrative theme focuses on being so caught up in our own concerns that we forget to consider others, the game itself seems so caught up in its need to tell the story that it forgets that the player is here to do more than just hear a story. They're here to play a game.
By combining such an upfront narrative with such restricted and simple repair mechanics, the game commits the very sin it's trying to convey in its story, focusing too much on what it wants the player to take away from it, without giving the player the chance to take away what they want from it.
Perhaps this isn't meant for an experienced adult who loves to tinker. Maybe it's meant for a child or someone completely inexperienced with repairing things. Maybe the simplicity is there specifically to give people without those experiences the illusion of having them, though I feel it fails to actually convey those experiences and instead offers something much less satisfying.
Overall, I appreciate what they tried to do, and in many ways, I think they've done a beautiful job of it. But for me, the core of the game completely undermine the otherwise beautiful story and artwork woven around them.
✅ Pro:
- Beautiful art
- Relaxing
- Nice visual
❌ Contro:
- Mechanics are overly simplistic
- Narrative is too explicit
- Lacks challenge
- It's look like a storybook than a game
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