But Empty is a puzzle game. Rather
than dragging the unwanted items
into a skip, you have to vanish them
instead, by lining each up against a
surface of the same colour. Turn the
scene so that the orange lamp is
facing the orange wall, and the lamp
will disappear, while the wall will
turn white so that it
can’t be used again. Oh
fantastic, you think,
the lamp’s no longer
blocking the green
desk, so let’s rotate the
room until that lines
up with the green
ceiling. You see how it
goes: you vanish each item in turn
until all the marked items are
absent, and the room looks like it’s
never been lived in.
Later levels introduce objects that
will paint surfaces colours other than
white, so they can be used again, but
this adds only a little more
S
tuff. It’s great, isn’t it? Except when it’s not: when you attach
personal baggage to it, and you have so much that you can barely
move in your own house. Empty is a game about stuff, more
specifically getting rid of it, as you Marie Kondo your way
around a sequence of rooms, ridding the colourful 3D spaces of
all their clutter. Once it’s gone, and each room is basically just the walls,
floor and ceiling, you move on. There are other domestic spaces, and later
on more abstract scenes, that demand your attention.
complexity to a puzzle game that
seems to have held back a little. I was
expecting another system to come
along that would fully open up the
concept, so it felt a bit unsatisfying to
find that, oh, I had suddenly
completed the game. The puzzles are
linear, and never scale greatly in
difficulty, no matter
how many objects the
developers can cram
into each scene. But I
managed to get
through them all
annoyingly quickly.PUZZLE TIME
If I’m griping, it’s because the act of
playing this is a little magical, and,
frankly, I wanted more of it. If only
real-world clutter could be tucked
away so easily. Each tactile scene is
part dolls’ house and part Rubik’s
Cube, as you rotate the world with
the mouse until you can line it up justright, and voilà. There’s usually one
tough-ish puzzle in each stage that
unlocks the rest, as something of an
avalanche. Ah, so the table was
blocking the football was blocking
the car was blocking the lampshade- and now it’s empty.
It was only when I had cleared a
few rooms that something like regret
came over me. Is this really a better
space now than when it was lived in?
Who owned that bike, and what was
the story behind that telescope? Oh
God, I’ve turned a home into a
clinical Ikea showroom, just a shame
there’s no meatballs.
GAME OVER
Perhaps the interstitial story blobs
could have wrestled with that, or
with, well, anything. Instead, the
text-based musings are a little too
random to cohere. They hardly get in
the way of the puzzling, however,
which is satisfying and relaxing, and
without being a massive hassle like a
real clear-out would be.NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
A soothing puzzle
game about making
stuff disappear
EXPECT TO PAY
Free
DEVELOPER
Dustyroom
PUBLISHER
In-house
REVIEWED ON
AMD [email protected],
6GB RAM, GeForce
GT 610
MULTIPLAYER
No
LINK
bit.ly/EmptyGame77
More could have been
done with the idea, but
Empty is still a lovely
puzzler that hits
medium heights.VERDICTNOW YOU SEE IT
How to disappear completely in minimalist puzzle game EMPTY
It felt a bit
unsatisfying to
find that, oh, I
had completed
the gameCOOL TITLES FOR NO CASH by Tom Sykes
FREE GAMES REVIEW
You rotate the room on a central axis.Nice table. Shame I have to vanish it.Not every object has to disappear.