Unravel is promoted as a tale “told completely without words”, but that’s not entirely true. In the photo album where the story is collected, a handwritten message summarises the themes of the game: “Love forms bonds, like strands of yarn. Like yarn, those bonds can be fragile, or get all tangled. But when they’re kept and cared for, they can bridge any distance.”
Words also appear in the first level of this much anticipated puzzle adventure, to tell you how to run, jump, grab, climb, swing, throw a lasso and build a bridge. These instructions are nicely arranged, floating in the sky at the point you need them, but that doesn’t disguise that this is a tutorial crammed into one level, expecting players to quickly grasp how to move through the world.
Therein lies the balance that games like Unravel try to strike: between a meaningful emotional message and a satisfying interactive experience.
Unravel is a collection of memories, a scrapbook, a hike through the countryside. It’s also a physics-based platformer with its verbs drawn from a single conceit: an avatar that can only get through each level by using the substance of its own body. The ideal player is someone who loves nature and family but has some familiarity with the fiddliness of a gamepad. Or perhaps it’s an experienced gamer who’s happy to play something relatively short and unchallenging for the sake of an emotional message.
What ties these aspects together is Yarny, a little anthropomorphic creature made of red yarn based on a doll that creative director Martin Sahlin made on a camping trip with his family. In the game Yarny belongs to the older woman whose memories you explore and collect, photos in her house containing the levels through which he trails that lifeline that’s supposed to represent love.
Yarny can unravel his torso to throw a lasso on to something and pull it over or swing across a gap. He can tie his yarn to connect two points and form a ramp or a bouncy bridge that lets him jump higher. He can grab objects and move them around or grab his own tail to climb back up the trail he’s left behind. Abilities like pushing 3D objects – apples, pinecones – up what is essentially a 2D ramp can feel jarring, especially given the realistic aesthetic and basis in physics, but the rules are internally consistent.
Text-based tutorial aside, some of these abilities are taught effectively through experience. When you’ve built your first ramp, a branch above drops an apple on to it to show that the thread can hold its weight. A later level blocks progress until you’ve gone left instead of right and lassoed a branch that drops a pine cone, which rolls a little way in the snow gathering mass. Points to which you can attach yarn are marked with little red knots, so it’s obvious where you should focus your attention, sometimes betraying the solution before you’ve even seen the goal.
An interesting limitation of Yarny’s structure is that he can only leave behind so much yarn before he runs out. At this point he is reduced to a threadbare figure, although the yarn stops flowing before he can disappear entirely. Periodic bundles of yarn wrapped around nails or twigs replenish him and thereby section the level into separate puzzles. If you find Yarny can go no further, you’ll have to retrace your steps and search for a puzzle you’ve missed or retie your yarn more efficiently. Fortunately yarn use is automatically economical, taut between knots, returning to Yarny’s body when he doubles back on himself.
For the most part, guiding Yarny through a level feels like patient exploration, helping a curious little creature navigate a world of familiar obstacles. Every now and then, however, Unravel reverts to type with a moment of video game frustration, generally through the introduction of peril. Yarny can apparently die: he can fall, be crushed, drown. Checkpoints ensure you never have to go back very far, but the inclusion of things like chase sequences (animals, rock slides, crumbling platforms, etc) feels at odds with the rest of the game.
Irritation can’t last for any player susceptible to charm, however. If you ever need to restart a section you can hold down a button and Yarny will show that he’s giving up by sitting cross-legged on the floor. If he stumbles, he gets up and rubs and shakes his head before moving on. In the rain, he runs with his arms wrapped around himself. He looks around him as he explores, startled by a butterfly or bird.
The world is incredibly detailed, 2D levels through 3D environments that stretch into the horizon, filled with animals, vegetables, and minerals shown from a close-up perspective close to the ground. Though realistic rather than fantastical, the levels are varied, taking Yarny through different locations and seasons and giving him different problems to solve: lasso a tricycle and drag it into a gate to open it, push an oyster into a puddle to lure a crab so Yarny can jump on its back, roll a pine cone in snow until it’s heavy enough to break through the ice.
In the quiet moments balls of light will arrange themselves into ghostly images in the background - a girl crouching by a river, two young women scratching their initials into a tree, a boy on a sled - and then disperse again. Yarny has only to walk past to collect these for the photo album, though he does turn his head to look. They are moments that, like the occasional long run through the rain, break up the levels nicely. Yarny’s journey might have its ups and downs, but it’s brief and beautiful. It is a mostly wordless message of love.
Electronic Arts; PC/PS4/Xbox One; £15; Pegi rating: 7+
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