In relationships, couples navigate obstacles and look for solutions to years of life together, which is often easier said than done. Thinking about someone else's feelings and compromising is a tricky money. A Fold Mbali, a 3D puzzle game, illustrates this robust journey by exploring the challenges of long-distance relationships and getting you to do one thing: wrap paper. The emotional journey combined with this unusual meganic puzzle makes for a novel experience, even if it doesn't always make a mark.
In Fold Mbali, you see different perspectives of two people in a long-distance relationship. One partner poses the opportunity for a once-in-a-lifetime job, forcing them to go for a while. Throughout the game, it allows for their text message conversations and conflicting feelings about the issue as they deal with everything from loneliness to conflict. While the story is very fun and thoughtful, how it is told ultimately makes it successful and progressive. You read the inner layers of the characters, and the particular colors convey their sadness while different words are collected and displayed on the screen to capture the deepest feelings of the home. This aesthetic helps pique a wide range of emotions, but sometimes it goes far beyond hitting you and memorizing you with melodrama. This approach is very powerful when overlapping, showing how even the smallest of things can change feelings and provoke uncertainty.
When certain doubts or problems arise, such as a person being upset over a change in plans, he or she packs a puzzle. The main mechanic is with you to wrap the platform like paper, using the methods in it to keep up with previous issues. The game makes this interesting and challenging by gradually adding complex objects. For example, you start by only folding the sides, but later you can wrap the edges in some pieces and turn the paper. Getting your character to stay on a solid path to travel and reach for the gold star is how you improve, and I've been pleased to see that seemingly unrelated images on the front and back of the paper can be formed into a cohesive final solution.
Unfortunately, if you make a mistake, folding, opening or scrolling pages means you are going through the same steps you completed so many times to make small changes. It didn't help that I ran into a few frustrating accidents that broke my focus. Anyway, I've enjoyed using my common sense to solve puzzles, and nothing is so complicated that it feels wrong. If you get stuck, the suggestion system can point you in the right direction, or allow you to go through any puzzle to continue the story.
Fold Mandu is a different puzzle game, and that's a good thing. The idea is a novel, and I like the story with some emotional pull, but it never goes beyond that. I don't think of a puzzle that stood out to others or a moment in a story that was so exciting. It all comes together in a virtual package. The mechanic of wrapping paper that makes you see fit to open it, even if its contents won't make you overly pleased.
