A Chill Out Casual 'Fixing' Puzzle Game
Fancy Running A Tiny Japanese Repair Shop?
If - like me - you've played 'House Flipper' and/or 'Tank Mechanic Simulator' yoou'll probably appreciate this laid back construction puzzle game. It's definately not designed to stretch your brain cells, it's more for calming a stressed mind at the end of the day (or at least that's when I've been playing Restory).
I should be clear that this is a early DEMO of the game designed to preview some of it's features, but I've found that there is definately enough in this preview to get you hooked and provide enough time to judge whether you're likely to purchase the full release when it comes out.
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| Above: The game starts you with some simple stuff like a Tamagotchi or one of these unsophisticated mobile phones, just to get you used to the mechanics. |
I've been pottering around with Restory for 5.3 hours now (STEAM tells me) and I've been pretty engrossed and surprised that I've spent so much time on just a demo!
So, What's It All About?
Well it's a 'sim-lite' fixer-upper game designed to help you tune out a bit from whatever else has been giving you grief in the day. You play as the new propriator of a tiny electronics repair shop, tasked with taking in faulty gadgets in the hope that you can get them working again. But don't panic, you don't have to know all that about electronics, as like other games of this ilk - like 'House Flipper' - the actual repairs are quite superficial jig-saw type puzzles and teh game gives you all the hint you need to disassemble and reassemble things!
You are visited by customers, contacted via email or can purchase broken devices from the game's simulated internet and then you must take things appar, clean or replace parts and then put stuff back together again. And all the while you will meet and get to know the games various characters whom you can help and get to know thier story.
It's all very casual and there is no critical deadline based chores - that I have seen in the demo. You start with very simple electronic with just a few parts and slowly work your way up the level of complexity.
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| Above: Things soon start ramping up, especially when you buy an appropriate repair certification licence. You will also have to watch your bank account! |
You earn money for your repairs and can purchase shop decorations, better tools or replacement parts. But the main focus is the challenge of repairing the broken gadgets, sometime the completion of which will advance the story part of the game.
And that's as much as I can tell you based on the limited demo. How the character's stories progress and what impact they have on your business isn't clear as yet, but looks like it might be interesting. What I am more intruigued with is whether more unusual and complex gadgets will appear in the full game as you soon want to try out jobs which push you ever so slightly more.
Part of the charm of the game though is the choice of the gadgets that you will be dealing with, many are stand-in items for real world vintage classic electronics, from the 'POKIA 3310' mobile phone (obviously an old Nokia) to the 'NONY PLAYMACHINE' (Sony PS1 console)! 😆
Conclusion
Again, I have to say that for a limited demo I really got a lot of enjoyment out of playing Restory. 5.3 hours play for a demo must be some kind of record for me as I normally know whether a game is 'for me' with in 10 minutes or so... But I just kept going with this one.
Obviously, the real longevity of this kind of game will be in the number and type of jobs that you will have to do in teh full game. I've already repaired every one of the range of gadgets available in the demo so really hope that the full game will have a far more expansive set of items to work on, that will be the key to it's ultimate success.
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| Above: The ultimate gadget for complexity in the demo is this 'Nony Goman'! Some real nostalgia here. |
I was less bothered about the story element, though will be interested to see how it relates to what kind of jobs you do or how teh jobs you do drives the story.
In any case, I have really enjoyed the demo and have placed this on my STEAM wish list. Hopefully the full game will not be too expensive for what it is - I think something like £15 would be fair, but continuing support by means of regular aditions of items to repair may make it worth a few quid more.
One last thing, part of the whole chill out vbe of this game is having a suitably chilled out music track. The game does have it's own 'radio' which plays a couple of nice-enough Lo-Fi tunes in a loop, but for longer sessions you may want to pick your own favourite music to relax to...
I found a one of the many YouTube Lo-Fi channels a good match, or for something a little different I went for '1940s Jazz for Deep Work', another YouTube chill station...
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