Unravel (Xbox One)
Unravel is a game that really wants your love. From the charming and memorable reveal at E3 2015 where creative director Martin Sahlin introduced it to the world to the heartfelt message from the developers hoping you’ll enjoy their game at the start, Unravel primes players to like it before they even get to play as its adorable protagonist Yarny. None of it feels superficial either, and as the player heads off into the gorgeously rendered worlds of Unravel, it’s not hard to become enamored with a game that had so much heart put into it.
Beginning in a cozy family home, Yarny spins himself to life from a ball of yarn dropped by an elderly woman. Left to his own devices, the little yarn man begins to look around, finding photos of the woman’s family and past. Some are wistful memories of youth and love or time spent out in nature with family and friends, but not everything is a happy memory. Seemingly taking place in Sweden, Yarny gets glimpses of people’s lives by collecting their memories as he wanders through the locations people once traveled, capping off a level by expanding an album with real photographs where a paragraph explains the context for such memories. While you’ll never really get to know anybody from the memories well enough to say who they were, each stage conveys a particular emotion not just through what you’re learning about this family’s past but the tone of the level as well.
One of the most striking aspects of Unravel is its visual fidelity. While the game is a platformer where Yarny can only move on a two-dimensional plane, the backgrounds and objects he interacts with are rendered in gorgeous detail, some of the natural environments borderline photorealistic. Some amazing artistry went into creating locations that might inspire a player just to stop and breathe in the scenery. Not every location is a spectacle of course, but there are plenty of lovely sights all viewed from Yarny’s low to the ground perspective. Walking beside the grass in the family garden, taking a trip to an autumnal mountaintop, pushing through the snow and crossing frozen rivers in winter, and walking by the seashore all give you plenty of striking scenery to take in, but the backgrounds are used for more than just visual splendor. Grimy locations begin to crop up as the family’s story heads to junkyards and industrial work sites, everything maintaining its impressive level of detail despite swinging towards moody and off-putting environments. Everything down to Yarny himself looks marvelous, save for a few moments you see uncanny humans rendered in game graphics rather than as fuzzy memories or the photographs of real life. They’re so rare though that for almost the entirety of the adventure your eyes can feast on constant visual delights.
Good graphics do not a good game make, but Unravel’s beautiful levels thankfully supplement a solid platform game base and help improve it by making for interesting areas to explore. Yarny’s yarn body is used to interesting effect for many navigation puzzles, his primary tool being to fling a string out to interact with the world around him. Yarny can use his string to swing from eligible latching points like Tarzan, the action pretty fluid and fun for how much speed can be built up across consecutive swings. Hooking points might connect to useful environmental objects as well, the yarn able to snag them to pull objects around or activate levers. Whether it is interacting with machines made by man or something like a tree branch you tug til it snaps, the yarn keeps finding new but natural uses that never stray too far from organic possibilities. It can take some figuring out how to use the yarn, but the latching points ensure you always know what is eligible to grabbing in an environment and thus the variables are limited to make problem solving less likely to get stuck on.
The yarn has a few other features besides just the lashing out of a single strand. As Yarny moves through the world, he always has a long string trailing behind him. Technically, in Unravel you are always unraveling, but by finding hooks with yarn coiled around them, you can refresh your body and activate a level checkpoint. Many puzzles aren’t just about finding the right solution but doing so without losing your entire body mass, the player sometimes having to first find a way to get to a checkpoint to refresh their string supply before they can overcome the progression challenge. This life line can be a bit limiting at times, mainly because it’s not easy to read how much of your body can unravel safely within the context of the current puzzle. When you get down to the end of your line it will start having tiny knots in it and the effect on Yarny is more apparent, his already reactive body that picks up snow and gets wet naturally also showing more gaps in it as you run out of yarn to work with. However, the amount you have is contingent on the last checkpoint you hit, this variability making it difficult to gauge if your solution to a puzzle can be executed. Having to go back and wind up your body isn’t too troublesome since the checkpoints are usually set between challenges, and doubling back on your trailing yarn actually serves a puzzle mechanic. By grabbing onto your life line, you can use it like a repelling rope to lower yourself down to avoid dangerous drops. Reclaiming some of your unwound body can also overcome the length limitation, many of the optional collectibles involving slight diversions into areas you’ll only reach with economical movement.
The last major use your string finds is in being tied to the latching points. Rather than just briefly using them for swinging or pulling yourself up to a new area, you can knot some yarn around a hook to attach yourself to it, allowing you to do things like dragging an object into a new spot, pulling down something with the gravity of Yarny jumping off a ledge, or most importantly, creating a trampoline by tying a taut line between two locations. Yarny’s default jump is pretty small and many obstacles are overcome by just putting a stepping stool of sorts for him to reach a little higher, but with a trampoline of your own design, Yarny can launch himself high into the air. Many latching points that can be used for this purpose are fairly obvious, positioned close together and in areas with very few options beyond tying a tight line. However, the yarn physics don’t always seem completely cooperative, more than a few moments seeming like the line should be firm but instead it droops between the two hooks. Again, gauging the line is a tiny issue but one that can be overcome with a little experimentation, and even if you do encounter a problem like getting crushed, falling into water, or being unraveled by an animal like a crab or bird, the nearby checkpoint lets you get right back into trying to get the puzzle to work properly.
Your yarn abilities are constantly tested in new ways in Unravel, but they aren’t the only things going on in it. Yarny can climb sparkling surfaces, although it can be a little awkward especially when you need to swing towards one because both undershooting it and overshooting it are potential problems. Some puzzles like riding falling rocks or avoiding crows by moving between areas of cover are independent of the puzzle formula and yarn usage entirely, more based on moving at the right times or dying if you don’t. These extra ideas such as building up snowballs to break through obstacles and outpacing a persistent underground creature keep things from overrelying on Unravel’s core gameplay ideas and give the player some new mechanics to think about, many levels feeling more unique for dipping into some appropriate gimmicks like avoiding rising water levels. Many stages do seem like they come to an abrupt end though since your forward progress rarely has a clear progression to it, Yarny simply moving between puzzles and spectacular sights rather than completing a stage that feels like its building to something. The general story is definitely working towards something though, the progression from the happy start to darker locations ensuring a tone that follows an appropriate arc.
THE VERDICT: Unravel is an absolutely gorgeous game that deserves plenty of love for its incredibly detailed environments and high quality visuals. Even before you factor in the gameplay, Unravel’s lovely locations and adorable and reactive hero make the experience one you wish to continue even when it starts getting a bit more melancholy. The many uses for Yarny’s string keep the core platforming interesting as well, plenty of mileage coming from its uses in hooking onto things and solving puzzles in levels that pack in plenty of diverse gimmicks. It isn’t as reliable as it should be though, issues with the line’s length and tautness and other tiny physics woes making the tour of beautiful natural environments a bit rough and uneven.
And so, I give Unravel for Xbox One…
A GOOD rating. While the artistry in Unravel is easy to love, the gameplay is more likely to just be liked. It has a good degree of versatility and the levels continue to throw in new ways it can interact with objects, and despite its problems with being tied tight or not communicating how much wiggle room you have to move, the string is definitely used to great effect throughout. However, you’re much more likely to be enamored by the world you’re walking through rather than what you’re doing in it, and those tiny moments where things aren’t coming together due to the physics being odd are what keep Unravel from being able to truly match the quality of its visuals. It is definitely still enjoyable, the sentiments coming across well, the environments remaining interesting even when they’re visually bleak, and Yarny always given something new to do so things are always moving forward and retaining player interest.
Unravel captures the player’s heart and tests the player’s mind, so even though it fumbles at points where its mechanics could use some refinement, it’s still a charming journey that many players will find is worth going on.