And I don’t normally do these kinds of posts about games I’ve played but I felt really let down by this one. They really came up with one of the best central mechanics for puzzles and then had no idea how to pull a game together around it. I’m getting ahead of myself.
Maquette features a stately pleasure dome that houses a series of nested universes. Inside the dome, you will see another smaller dome, with another smaller dome inside of that. Outside, a large dome blankets the sky, and beyond that an even bigger dome stretches out to infinity. When you move objects between these planes, a duplicate of the object appears on the same coordinates, but much bigger or much smaller. This is such an exciting mechanic, and every time I got to work with it I was having a good time. Really cannot overstate how much I enjoyed the presentation of this game.
After an hour or so of play, Maquette runs out of ideas for new puzzles. It isn’t a long game, but the solutions start to become repetitive, and I found myself encountering new problems that I was solving absent-mindedly. This isn’t always the worst thing in the world if the puzzles exist to serve a story. As an example, The Beginners Guide isn’t a difficult game, but the narrative it pulls together is so naturally magnetic, and it doesn’t work without the playable levels. In Maquette, a character says “Every day I wake up broken. And I couldn’t fix it.” shortly before you are prompted with a (remarkably easy) sliding block puzzle to get across a chasm.
The story the game tells, of a couple meeting, dating, and then the relationship falling apart starts quite compelling. The characters are fun to listen to as they learn more about each other and bond over their mutual interests. However by the third level, as their relationship becomes fractured, the rewards for completing a puzzle is getting to hear two people bickering. Cool!!
I don’t think Maquette is a bad game. The technical artistry in the game has genuinely some jaw-dropping moments, and the final level remixes the main mechanic in such a unique and compelling way. But so many aspects feel underbaked in a way that left me pleading for something else. I don’t know if there were more ideas for puzzles that were cut for one reason or another, but the game promises new ways to interact with the world and simply doesn’t deliver.
Maquette is currently on Xbox Gamepass. And at the end of the day I’d still recommend it. But there are other puzzle games I would recommend first. Out of ten.