It’s time for a puzzle game and you know those can be very hit or miss for me. For these types of games I either want a good story or I want something that’s just a lot of fun and really addictive like gem matching. That’s where it’s at but this game unfortunately doesn’t seem to have either. There are a lot of levels so I can’t knock the game in terms of content but the puzzles themselves really aren’t very fun to play and that’s really a big deal. Ultimately I would even say that it’s a game breaking deal.

There isn’t really any kind of preview of build up when you start the game. You are thrown right into the mix. The puzzles are divided into around 5 chapters. Each chapter has over 20 puzzles and you try to solve them until you win. If you are totally stuck you can ask for a hint or skip the puzzle and return to it for later. The puzzles are generally about organizing things. For example, putting everything into a basket, lining up books from smallest to largest, etc. You’re mainly going things like this until you get to the end of the game. As you go on, the puzzles naturally get a lot tougher to figure out.

The toughest part here is that outside of asking for a hint, you are given no context to the puzzles whatsoever. You have to try and use deductive reasoning here which is an interesting idea in concept, but I don’t think it really works. I would like to at least have a basic idea of what I’m doing here. Some are self explanatory like with the books as you try to sort them from smallest to largest. Others are a lot trickier like where you have 3 paintings. It seem like you have to try and tilt them a little but I don’t get the logic of that one and the tilts didn’t seem to stick. I should mention now that there is also no tutorial on how the controls work.

You are just thrown into the mix and have to try and work it out. Again this could work depending on how the puzzle goes but this game was definitely not up to the task. I think one of the reasons for this is also how silent the game is. It could have really used a hype soundtrack. Even just 4-5 different songs that cycle through would add a whole lot of life to the game. Without that, it just ends up being completely forgotten and you will have soon left it in the dust. The fact that it’s not free by default was also a bit surprising for me.

Sometimes games just don’t click though and that’s just how it goes. Believe it or not I’ve still played worse games than this one. As negative as this one sounds, at least it is a very basic title that manages your expectations right from the jump. It could absolutely be wayyyyy worse than that. I guess if there was ever a sequel to this one, I would say it should add some kind of a basic plot even if it’s only through text. Maybe every puzzle you complete lets you learn about 2 paragraphs worth of new information. Some kind of hook right?

I’m not sure if there’s a post game here but with the large amount of puzzles the game has, it is already plenty long. It’s hard to picture anyone just flying by the game because of how varied the puzzles are. There will surely be some of them mixed in there that will give you a little trouble here and there. Those are the ones that you will definitely need to watch out for and while you can skip them, I assume you need to complete all puzzles to truly complete the game. Not that there is likely to be any kind of story ending though but maybe they did sneak a secret cutscene in at the end. Technically speaking, there’s no reason to assume that would be impossible right?

Overall, A Little to the Left is not a game I would recommend. There’s just not enough detail to it so it really ends up holding itself back. The controls are pretty simple yet sometimes not very intuitive. I could see this working as a mobile game between subway stations to buy yourself some time but as a full fledged video game I don’t see there being many reasons to pick this over something else. At least for people who really do enjoy the game, there is a lot to do here. For everyone else, yeah it’s time to go back to Professor Layton or something like that instead for the quality puzzle gameplay. That also has the added benefit of having a full fledged story mode with it as well. How do you top that?

Overall 3/10