Unpacking review – moving house has never been so moving

PC, Xbox (version tested), Nintendo Switch; Witch Beam
Two decades of house moves are condensed into one relaxing puzzle as you help the narrator to unpack - and unpick her life in the process

Moving home is such an intense and often melancholic experience. Nothing forces you to assess the events of your life, and the effects they've had on you, more than packing everything you own into boxes and then trying to find new places for them on the other side. Often there are difficult choices about what to leave behind. Sometimes you find things you thought were long lost, sometimes painful memories are exhumed in the process. All of these emotions are beautifully and wordlessly explored in Unpacking.

The set-up is perfectly simple. Between 1995 and 2015 our unnamed narrator makes a number of house moves, and the player has to help her unpack in each new location. We begin with her first solo bedroom as a child, cramming cardboard boxes full of toys and books, and we follow her from there, through her college years and into adulthood. At each stage, we're given an isometric view of each room in her home and the piles of boxes waiting there. You simply click on one to open it, then click on each object inside, choosing a suitable place to put it.