Environmental Storytelling

Traditionally, the way video games tell a story is in the form of cutscenes.  In more recent years audio logs and text documents have become an increasingly common alternative.  However, neither are particularly elegant approaches.  Thankfully, there is another option in the form of pure visuals.  Games like Journey, Gris and Abzû excel at this, but they are also abstracted; relying on metaphor and allusion to communicate meaning.  Another variation in this vein is (for lack of a better term) armchair detective mode.  Games such as Dead Space and the Souls series use this method a lot in conjunction with more traditional storytelling techniques.  There is a game that recently came out though which uses visual clues to tell a surprisingly personal tale...but only one players will pick up on if they are paying close attention.  Appropriately enough, it's called Unpacking. 

As the name of the game implies, Unpacking is all about deciding where to put things when moving into a new home.  At its heart, Unpacking is a simple puzzle game.  Players have a fair amount of leeway as to where they can put things, but cannot advance to the next challenge if (for example) clothes are scattered all over the floor.  So, a certain amount of tidiness is required.  The game begins with a child's room.  Observant players will quickly deduce that they are in the roll of a girl who is somewhere around that age when one transitions from primary school to a secondary education.  Initially, players only have a bedroom to focus on.  As the game progresses though, more areas (including bathrooms, kitchens, living rooms and a foyer of sorts) are presented.  Added to this are stage unique conditions such as accommodating for roommates when the timeline advances to our female protagonist's college years.  Based on various items the player has to sort through and organize, it quickly becomes apparent that she is an artist and into fitness.  This leads to a stage where the player must decide where to put things in an already very masculine themed apartment.  It seems that she has moved in with her boyfriend.  Based on his stuff, it's not hard to conclude that he's a gym bro who likes wine, coffee, movies and video games.  It's here that we see some of the more subtle nuance seeping in.  Unlike the roommates situation, players can move his stuff around to some extent in order to make room for her own things...and yet there really isn't enough space for everything.  Her framed diploma, for example, has to go under the bed (out of sight) for lack of wall space and there really isn't a place for her art supplies or even all her personal hygiene products.

After clearing this stage, the next finds players back in the starting room of the game; the bedroom from their childhood.  A photo of a couple from the previous stage is still among her personal possessions (complete with thumbtacks), but the lack of a display surface means that it has to go in a drawer or some other out-of-the-way location.  On top of that one tack is stuck directly in the face of the male in the photo.  Presumably, things didn't work out and she is back at her parents home.  On the plus side though a stack of business cards implies that she is finding employment for her artistic talents  Unfortunately, the presence of some kind of backpain medicine indicates that she might need to change up her fitness routine due to age or injury.

There are more stages after this, but I think I have spoiled enough of the game as is.  Unpacking is a clever little game in terms of design and presentation despite the actual gameplay being nothing remarkable.  Even so, I hope other game developers take note because this indie gem demonstrates very clearly how details in an environment can say just as much (if not more) about characters and events than the written word or expository dialogue.