A Little to the Left

Hear me out, now, I know this is a positive review, but man do I have some gripes with this game. First of all, let me get it out of the way first, the game is fine, it's fun, it's addictive somewhat. I even went out of my way to 100% both it and the DLCs although it was more out of a sense of duty than anything else; I wasn't exactly burning at the prospect of paying more money just so that I'd have a free conscience when complaining about it. Some of the puzzles in this game, -if you could even call them puzzles- are so mind-numbingly annoying and counter-intuitive yet simultaniously so minor that I feel like I'm being a nitpicking ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ even though I spent a good 40% of the game being frustrated. But honestly, I can live with that, maybe I'm just stupid and these puzzles are easy. The controls, however, are the most annoying I've ever experienced in a point-and-click game. Sure, on a lot of puzzles you barely even notice them, but on others, they will make your life miserable. For example, one of the first puzzles in the game has you sort a bunch of gray-coloured pencils. The amount of precision you need to successfully sort the pencils without missing the (barely visible) marks on the table is comedic. Speaking of sorting things you have to pick them up, and while you pick them up, you have your HUGE, SOLID COLOUR cursor blocking your view so if you need to closely examine an item for its details, better hope you can see it while it's on the floor, at an angle and 9 times out of 10 obscured by other objects (side-note, I don't know if there are settings in this game that change this so that maybe the cursor is transparent. but to be completely fair, it should've automatically been set at like 50 or 75 % opacity). Another puzzle near the end of the game requires you to allign some candles by burning or unburning (it makes sense in-game, kinda) them, the problem is that you have to time it JUST right so that they are all the same height, one wrong move and you get the other solution to the puzzle which is to allign them from tallest to shortest. Speaking of accidentally finding solutions to puzzles, if you want to 100% this game without using hints, be ready to accidentally solve a puzzle, reload, accidentally solve it again, reload, and accidentally solve it a third time. It's honestly so annoying and obnoxious, your mouse cursor is grayed out, you can't interact with anything, you hear that oh-so-tranquil "ding", the star screen pops up... and then you realise that nothing has changed. And this is even worse if a puzzle has like 5 solutions because then it'll happen all the time, even if you aren't actively trying to input a solution, you could be randomly organising the items you have at your disposal and you'll just randomly solve it. This has unironically the simplest solution, once a puzzle has been solved, just make it so that you can't solve it the same way anymore, the only reason I can come up with for them to not have it in the game is if the people they had playtesting the game all had dementia and already forgot they solved the puzzle a certain way and then kept asking "why isn't this working? it makes perfect sense", except, that doesn't even make sense, because even if you give up and try to use a hint, you have to SLOWLY open the menu, click on "hint", watch the menu SLOWLY transition to the hint page, do the stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ minigame where you use the eraser (which, might I add, is only fun the first, maybe even second time you do it), then realise it's a solution you've already found, turn the page over, do the same minigame again, find the solution, close the hint menu SLOWLY, close the normal menu SLOWLY and then try and remember every detail of the hint. Good luck if you have ADHD. Also, some of the colour-themed puzzles really need a good eye for detail, thankfully the game has a colour-assist mode, but it still sucks how I kept asking myself: "Am I colourblind?" while playing this. And don't even get me started on the Daily Tidy, I believe that any game that requires you to log in to do a daily mission or challenge or whatever for an achievement is proof that the devs are insecure about the replay value of their game and result to cheap tricks like this. It's even more annoying when you have to do it for 100 days. Thankfully, you don't have to do it for 100 days straight (i believe you only need to do it for 30 days straight for a similar achievement). Also ♥♥♥♥ the calendar puzzles. I've, more than once, solved them by following the pattern but because I didn't realise that the only correct way to solve them is by ignoring the already set-up patterns and instead calculate the exact spacing between days to place the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stickers, I had to follow a tutorial some nice lady posted on youtube (you'll be in my shoes eventually, you'll find her). Another thing, I don't know if this was intentional, but the cat segments are so perfectly placed, that every time I encounter the thing I am at peak aggression, which has, in turn, Pavloved me into hating it with every fiber of my being, which means that I get angry at the mere reference of a cat in this game, and believe me, there are a LOT of cat references in this game. I also think the ending sequence goes on for way too long. As a final note I would like to add that the base game with no DLCs is not worth its current price tag of 14.99€ (or 14.99$ (or 165,000₫)), I feel it would be better if the base game was 7.99€ (or 7.99$ (or 85,000₫)) I'd just wait for the game to go on sale if I was you (which I did, by the way) You might be asking after all that, why am I giving this game a positive review? Well, to be completely honest, I do like the game, it's a fun way to pass the time, I do enjoy the some of the puzzles (drawer puzzles, mainly, those are the most replayable part about this game), am I ever going to play this game again after the 100%? probably, but it'll be a while until then, and I will probably just stick to the drawer puzzles, but I got a good 20 hours out of this game regardless so, who cares? Overall, I'd like to bestow upon A Little To The Left the highest possible honour 6 annoying puzzle types out of 10

I'm sorry to say this, but I'm honestly very disappointed with this game. I'm a huge fan of organizing and was really excited to try it, but what I found was an incomplete experience that simply isn't worth the asking price. I enjoy 100% completing games and was expecting a relaxing experience at my own pace, far removed from the predatory practices that have become common in modern gaming. Instead, I found achievements tied to daily challenges that require logging in for an entire month, as well as others that can only be completed across 100 different days. And that's not even mentioning the large number of achievements that are impossible to obtain unless you buy two DLCs, which together cost about as much as the base game and, judging by my experience, are likely just as disappointing. The game can be completed in about 4 hours and has virtually no replay value. For this price, you're better off buying almost anything else. What a waste of potential.

Recommended with an asterisk. The first three chapters are wonderful, highly recommended. However, the final two chapters just aren't great. The game becomes less about relaxing organization and more about frustratingly figuring out what the game wants you to do, which wasn't what I wanted from the game. In addition, half the achievements being locked behind DLC and daily challenges rubs me the wrong way.

完全不懂一个打着放松休闲tag的游戏我怎么越玩越暴躁了呀。部分关卡的解谜完全匪夷所思，可能是我确实无法和制作团队对上脑电波吧，总之就是抱着解压目的来玩然后被狠狠创飞了........

This game is everything I thought it would be. The illustrations are beautiful, the music and sound effects really fit the gameplay, and the puzzles are so fun and creative. I love it! I could play it forever! Can't recommend it enough to people who love puzzles like me. Really charming, what an absolute joy!

I want to enjoy this game but it feels like so many of the levels are so incredibly arbitrary that all you can do is try every possible arrangement until the game tells you you're done, and even then it's still not clear why that arrangement is "good" and everything else you did was "bad"

单纯作为解压游戏来说是好玩的，打折的时候推荐购买，美术风格简单治愈，需要动一点脑子，挺适合平时当做摸鱼小游戏玩，成就党不推荐一次性从头到尾打完。 缺点是成就设置太tm离谱了，全成就硬性绑定DLC就算了，还要需要连续不间断的做100天每日任务，虽然可以通过修改时间完成但做到30多天还是有点累了，关卡翻来覆去就是游戏里的那几关，做到后面已经没有解密的乐趣了完全就是机械性打卡（这也是为什么我不推荐成就党一次性打完的原因），一款买断制游为什么要设置一个类似保证日活的任务我无法理解……除了这点能接受的话非常推荐打折的时候入手

I've yet to complete the 'daily tidy' goals, so I expect to continue playing for that sisyphean achievement completion, however they do not offer substantive enough content for me to consider completing more of them as significant enough to change my opinion, so I'm sharing it now. The 'just tidying up' pattern-seeking game is a rough territory to wade into as the omission of some modes determined to be oversight, as well as inclusion of others determined to be overconfidence, can turn impressions sour quick. However, Max Inferno have overall managed to avoid this problem (in the base game, at least) to the point that grace is fairly easy to give on the annoying puzzles. But... everything else kind of ruins it for me. The art style is very cute, but wasn't enough to save my gaming experience. The puzzles ranged from 'arrange these by clear characteristics' to 'I don't know why they thought we would get this,' most leaning towards the former rather than the latter. The simpler puzzles, however, joined with random nuisances (sometimes literal nuisances programmed into the game for some unintelligible reason) to cause enough interruption that I couldn't fully embrace the 'brain off' type of play, either--frequently left waiting just long enough for an animation to end, or for the game's cutesy 'cat paw interrupts your play' (first time was clever, second was annoying, third and beyond? unbearable) to tear me away from the game and get angrier at whatever annoyance came up. I would suggest that Max Inferno learned from this based on the comparative few interruptions in Cupboards & Drawers DLC, but as more annoyances came back in Seeing Stars this interruptive impetus seems to have only temporarily vacated their brains. At the beginning of my playtime I was plagued my control issues, and looked forward to trying it out on my steam deck--maybe the controls would be more comfortable for somebody else, but I continued to find them annoying. Then I tried using the touchscreen. Aha! I strongly suspect development began as a phone game and it was shipped on PC, though I don't think my mind can be changed because of how infuriating the controls were, excessive UI navigation that was required and all. I recommended Cupboards & Drawers because, if you have already committed yourself to the game (and thus accepted the annoyances), Cupboards & Drawers is more of its best qualities. However, I still can't put aside the poor qualities long enough to consider this game a good recommendation.