City Barcelona - Rupert Cole (From the 'Is This Seat Taken?' soundtrack)
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(i am officially BEHIND on writing these pages so i'm gonna do this one quickly)
I played this for the first time during NextFest in like may? (i think). I thought it was really neat, and I was interested to see how the concept would develop in the full game. Now I've played it, I can say that it doesn't develop by much!! It's unfortunate, because the initial idea is really interesting, but it seems like the devs had a tough time building levels around it.
Is This Seat Taken? is a cozy puzzle game focused on dragging and dropping characters into seats on a floorplan. Levels take place at weddings, football games, on buses and in boats. The puzzle aspect emerges when certain characters start to have sets of pre-requisites that must be fulfiled in order for them to be happy. Some will be stinky, and spread bad smells to the seats around them. Some will HATE it when it's stinky. You have to make sure those two don't sit together.
In the first quarter, difficulty is able to scale nicely. New pre-requisites and more complicated seating arrangements are introduced gradually. This doesn't last, though. Difficulty begins to fluctuate pretty badly in the latter half, with some of the hardest levels in the entire game taking place on a train around 70% of the way through. It feels pretty jarring to go from a level that took 40 minutes into one that takes 5. It's confusing as to how this happened, too. It's not like I was just confused on the train level; it's like, objectively the hardest one in the game. I'm sure there's only one possible outcome where other levels have multiple. Something as simple as shifting a few levels around would make this an overall better experience and that sucks
Outside of the base concept of 'arranging a floorplan', I assumed that new elements would be introduced to make things more challenging and engaging. This is kind of the case, but it's not really enough. Levels like the train have air conditioning units you can turn on and off in order to cool down certain characters that need it. Some are sensitive to the cold, too, so you have to make sure they don't sit in the A/C. That's literally all the additional challenge provided by that mechanic. Alot of the other ones play out similarly. One highlight is the diner level, which has movable meals that certain characters will want to eat, and it actually feels like an alteration to the gameplay. It's a one time thing, though. None of the other gimmicks introduced later on are really compelling enough to stop a feeling of repetitiveness from seeping in.
Speaking of repetitiveness, one thing I didn't expect was how many levels would be reused!! I think they're all used at least twice, with some even being 3 times. The fact that there's 4 mini-puzzles that take place on each map makes this pretty shitty, and I arranged that accursed train seat plan at least 12 times. I don't wanna do that!! It feels like not much more than padding to make the game sellable at a higher price without actually designing more puzzles, which is a shame.
There's a loose narrative following a character on her path to become a movie star that you follow as the game unfolds, which is a nice touch. It definitely helps seperate the game from feeling like something I would play on my phone when I was 11. The artstyle also helps lift it away from this, It's really cute and charming. Kind of minimalist, but not really? It has enough going on that it only feels a tiny bit corporate coded. The music is pretty good too! It really elevates the laid-back cozy feeling of playing little puzzles like these.
Is This Seat Taken? has a strong premise, but fails to deliver on elevating it to full potential. More moving parts might have made it a little too hard and detracted from the relaxing vibe they were going for, though. They could have at least made the optional unlockable levels a little harder though!! those shits were easier than the actual ones. It overstays its welcome slightly, but only because of it's overused levels and repetitive nature. I wish I could have liked this more but I still think its pretty neat! I had a few moments where everything clicked into place in my head and it felt very satisfying. maybe some more seats should have been taken in the brainstorming meetings so they could come up with better mechanics LOL!!!
