The Sorting Bureau

Mid, repetitive, pointless gameplay, no variety or progression, plus for 100% completion, youre forced to play long enough to reach all 4 seasons in time, for no explainable reason. I was so excited for this game, being a big fan of games like it, and hoping it would be akin to A Little to the Left. If that is what youre hoping this game will be, I suggest you walk away while you have the chance.

Incredibly soulless, bland and buggy game bordering on slop, genuinely cannot tell if it's because of potential clanker use or if it's just rushed and carelessly developed. I was expecting a satisfying sorting game with categories that make sense, gameplay that has variety, visual interest, but alas. Gameplay gets repetitive and boring very quickly as there are only "three" types of sorting: laying out items for a picture, sorting to boxes according to categories and "matryoshka" type - sorting the sorted boxes (so technically two, hence the quotation marks). The picture layout genuinely makes no sense, you would think that items would be put together by type or color, or in any other satisfying way... (no, for reference see community posted screenshots)/ The sorting categories and some elements of the gameplay often make no sense, some specific examples: - Sorting buttons into two categories that are labelled... "buttons" and "everything else". The difference? Number of holes in the buttons. Often encountered the same sorting categories in the "matryoshka" levels with pasta, shells, others. -In leaf sorting levels, most commonly required categories will ALL be by leaf name and then one just "large" - ironically, "large" will be the label given to Ginko leaves, which are well... smaller than the properly labelled Maple leaves :DD -Commonly encountered level with at least five types of items to be sorted into ONE box - as in you have to throw in all the items into the box with no sorting included. -"Organic" category often being food items and then pencils or other misc. items. which are not in fact organic... -When sorting by colors, some items of said color will be accepted into the box, others not (do not be fooled, orange cookies will not, in fact, go into the orange box). There are also color name contradictions, specifically, in one level pasta will be purple, in the other pink (said pasta is hot pink btw). -THE COINS ARE CUT UP. There are levels in which you have to put items, like stamps or leaves together (ignoring the fact that it's a copypaste cut pattern). How come COINS are cut up like paper, I do not know. There are many other issues in the same vein that just ruin the experience and reek of slop/carelessness. Not to mention the galore of visual bugs (for example, sorted items from a completed level staying on your desk/office interface, still interactable or when interacting with the cat the zzz just gets bigger until it covers the entire screen). Some characters just have order notes that clearly belong to different customers. Certain gameplay mechanics, like grabbing items in a bunch often times just do not work, make the items glitch out, jump around, etc. It is quite easy to softlock yourself by having an item a) hide behind the sorting box and glitching out, b) item falling off the screen. Another gripe - this game is VERY clicky, if you have wrist problems, do not play this game on PC. One level, with for example 60 pieces will have you clicking for at least 2-3 times that amount, regardless if you try to bunch everything up. This game would work as a mindless mobile game to play whilst waiting for public transport or something. The only reason I played as long was for the "All Four Windows" achievement - there is a reason why the amount of players who have this one is so low. It is because to get to that point, you have to play the same mindless levels with zero variety and all the issues mentioned above. Could go on, but I do not think this slop (human made or not) deserves any more of my energy. Go play A Little To The Left instead. Or a mobile sorting game.

I like that this exists, and mainly bought it to encourage the developers because it was clearly a labor of love and making games is hard. But honestly? I might actually play more of it. It's very vibey, and the fact that they tested it on the Steam Deck means I'll probably be able to get my partner to give it a try. If you're on the fence, just watch the trailer. If that seems like fun, then you'll probably enjoy this.

"Repetitive = bad" they say. I have to agree, the game is repetitive but that doesn't make it bad. The repetitiveness is kinda the point here, no? You sort some, take a break, return to the real world duties and then come back to sort some more. You are not supposed to inhale the whole game in one go. Instead, digest it slowly. If you do that, I am sure you will get much more joy out of this game.

I really wanted to like this game, and I did enjoy parts of it, but I simply can't recommend it to people. If you are the kind of person who likes sorting, there is a high chance you will NOT like this game. If you want to play what this game says that it is, check out [b]Sorting Inc.[/b] It's short, but very good, satisfying, consistent, and fun! Most of the levels have no satisfying solution. There are some levels where you lay everything out on a piece of paper, but everything is all mixed together in a way that makes a good pattern difficult. There are levels where you sort by color, but the color listed isn't accurate to what goes in the box. Like I saw pink things go into the red AND white boxes on different occasions. Plus it will be "all red objects" or "all warm toned objects" and it will be a box with leaves, pasta, thumbtacks, candy, and stamps. Plus "warm toned" is a term that doesn't apply consistently either. You'll have warm brown cookies that go in "other" and then other warm brown cookies that count as warm toned. Also, most of the levels would have a "miscellaneous," "other," or "everything else group, which also made it wildly unsatisfying, in the same as the everything of one color but even worse. A coin, a red leaf, gummy bears, paper clips, a green leaf, and several stamps all in one box as the sorting solution? Why would would you make a sorting game have that as the solution, and so consistently? There are some times where they would let you pick your own categories and organization styles but there were never enough boxes to do what would makes sense, and I quickly learned that you can just dump objects into boxes until there are no boxes on the table and it counts as completion even if they have nothing in common, so it's pointless. There's also one of my least favorite groupings "organic" which ends up including plastic wrapped candy and PEARLS but doesn't include dark brown cookies but DOES include tan cookies?? What? Also, there are a couple levels where you organize by size, and those are the second worst. There were multiple times where one object would be visibly smaller than stuff in the "tiny" collection, but still go in the "small" collection instead. There was no consistency that I could find. The only way to figure out the "size" of something is try to put into one of the boxes and see if it goes in or not, because it's actual size means nothing to the solution. The worst level of all was one where the organization made no sense at all. It was "buttons" and "plastic" but in the "plastic" group, there were multiple buttons with no explanation as to why some buttons were "buttons" and why some where "plastic." I played through to Winter 1, so I saw many MANY levels, probably around 100, and the problem isn't that they are repetitive, it's that they are inconsistent, annoying, unclear, and not satisfying. It sucks because there were some levels that were genuinely fun and exactly what I was looking for, but most of it was a slog through unskippable levels/days to get to the end so I could be done.

It doesn't lie or mislead in any way, it just is sorting the same exact type of items into the same exact box, the same exact way every time, ad nauseam, except for when you have to sort onto a piece of paper which doesn't need to be in any order or pattern and is a much slower process. Was trying to finish to get the last 3 achievements I needed but it just felt *too* much of a drag to continue. Graphics are really nice, the ASMR is serviceable, the letters provided by clients are forgetful. If you've played A Little To the Left or Unpacking, this is not the game for you. Otherwise, if you truly like extreme-cozy, non-puzzle, standard sorting games, or you appreciate ASMR, this is for you.

Game idea, art is cute and the sounds are so realistic and tingles the brain and content is great but one major issue i'm finding is every few game days there will be a box that is missing a few pieces (like putting stamps back together or a piece of candy is missing) and it is only fixed when i restart the game but the box's contents is fully reset even if the rest of the game data is saved making me restart the box and sometimes the reset doesn't fix it, would be a great game if these little issues were worked out but for now its made a cute game infuriating