Maquette's artfully designed world is modeled after the sketches in Michael's memory book. What makes it sizzle here is the lush presentation. It's a lovely conceit, if a familiar one that's been explored in countless other formats before.
#Maquette house puzzle series
Each completed chapter and puzzle series gives us a peek into Michael and Kenzie's shared existence, with the two voice actors breathing life into each character as they laugh, love, bicker, and, ultimately, break. It's all there, even the post-relationship rite of passage of exchanging personal items left behind in one another's homes. And the inevitable chaos and uncertainty that follows as those minuscule breaks widen into yawning chasms. The creeping sense of dread and looming loss as the tiniest cracks start to form. The warm and fuzzy feelings of that first encounter, a perfect and incorruptible moment in time when everything seemed to line up. As you move from The Gardens all the way through to The Exchange, the memories you uncover lay out an arc that should be familiar to anyone who's ever loved and lost. The whole thing is broken into seven chapters of themed puzzles, with each set tied to a specific memory. As you solve Maquette's shifting series of puzzles, blocks of text are scrawled into view that add some narrative texture to each one. Michael's journey into these forgotten memories forms the backbone of his letter, which paints a picture of the ups and downs he and Kenzie lived through together before their parting. Maquette is about a relationship that didn't work out, and the process of finding closure.
(Fun fact: Howard and Gabel are married IRL.) Inside, he finds the whole arc of their relationship laid out across pages of sketches the two made together. While hunting for his lost keys one day, Michael (Seth Gabel) comes across an old sketchbook he shared with his former love, Kenzie (Bryce Dallas Howard). The framework for this fantastical concept is a goodbye letter.
These two layers are in constant contention as you work your way through what Annapurna Interactive, gaming's premiere arthouse publisher, describes as a "first-person recursive puzzle game." What that really means is you're constantly tinkering with scale as you manipulate the world itself, the world-within-the-world, and the world-within-the-world-within-the-world.
Maquette is also a puzzle game that doesn't always work so well. Maquette is a story about a relationship that didn't work out, and the process of finding closure in an exploration of the memories left behind.
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