LOVE - A Puzzle Box Filled with Stories Review: An Addictive Puzzle Experience - Screen Rant

Developed and published by Rocketship Park, LOVE - A Puzzle Box Filled with Stories is fueled by its amazing storytelling of emotional, heartwarming relationships, with an ingenious puzzle twist. Players can view different timelines of an apartment building simultaneously as they interact with residents and objects to change the past and bring characters together in the present. While they won’t be able to see the whole picture at once, they can make parts slowly come together in order to complete the engaging puzzles that LOVE provides. Some of the puzzles will even affect each other, showing how intertwined everyone’s stories are.

What seems like a challenging concept is orchestrated seamlessly in LOVE. As with many other puzzle games, players will be encouraged to approach each puzzle in a different way, flexing some of that mental muscle. Using just the mouse, players can rotate the apartments in the building through the past and present, see inside, and direct residents to move to specific locations in order to interact with others or to cause chain events. Players will find themselves addicted to trying new combinations of time frames, positions, and apartments to see how they can get the story to progress with this unique mechanic.

Not only can players interact with residents, but with objects in the apartments as well. They will be able to open windows, agitate air conditioners, or make dogs bark. This mechanic doesn’t apply to every object, just those that could greatly impact the course of a story. Players can also look for keys that will allow them to turn on security cameras, and look at items through the screen, a mechanic that deviates from the game’s primary mechanics and keeps players on their toes, looking for any objects to interact with in new ways.

LOVE - A Puzzle Box Full of Stories Zoom

With the help of photographic clues, players can see how different puzzles, or storylines between a specific set of characters, evolve over time in relation to them. These clues give players a small direction by showing either the beginning of a story or the ending of a story so that they can orchestrate their actions. The best part is that players can refer back to these images when they are stuck, and see how they relate to each other. In a puzzle game where players might reach a stale-mate, this is a clever idea to include in such a detailed game.

LOVE’s storytelling is what really brings the game together. Players will be quickly invested in the stories that unfurl around them, as they all have the central relatable theme of love and intrapersonal relationships. LOVE is able to tell complex stories around its characters, even without dialogue. Using a simplistic character design may have been a small mistake on the developer’s part; while players will be able to easily identify with the characters, sometimes it is hard to see what the player is clicking on in the environment or who a character is, as none of them are named.

LOVE - A Puzzle Box Filled with Stories Photos

While LOVE is a relatively short playthrough, it will leave players with a sense of accomplishment once they have finally reached the end and seen the story come full circle. Any puzzler who is looking for a way to test their skills in a new format will be refreshed by LOVE’s mechanics and storytelling, as both factors will leave a lasting impression.

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LOVE - A Puzzle Box Filled with Stories is available for PC on Steam. Screen Rant was given a Steam code for the purposes of this review.

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About The Author

MJ Cox (141 Articles Published)

MJ Cox is a board and video game enthusiast located in Kansas. As a writer, gamer, and marketing professional, MJ currently writes for Screen Rant covering Gaming Guides. A graduate of the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, she has created content for a variety of different organizations and news sources. When she isn't writing, MJ likes to play her Nintendo Switch outdoors with her loving cat and baker's dozen of chickens.