As someone who is closing in on 5,000 games reviewed for the site, I’ve obviously had quite a lot of time to sit and contemplate just about every flavor of game there is. While casual gaming tends to be easy to push aside, and perhaps more commonly thought of with mobile games and not necessarily for play on dedicated hardware, there’s still obviously a place for it. Something calming and relaxing is nice after a long day where you just want to unwind, and give your brain and nerves a little bit of a break. Of course, if the casual space is what you’re aiming for, you should also be sure that’s actually what the end user will end up experiencing though.

Pick & Place is aiming for the same sort of casual cozy puzzling that you find in other indie titles like A Little to the Left and some others, throwing a series of different ideas and tasks at you to enjoy. Typically with a focus on organizing, and capitalizing on the sense of satisfaction people can have from arranging things just right, stages can vary in complexity and their length. They’ll sometimes take just a minute or two, but you may find yourself instead stuck on a random challenge put in front of you, quickly shattering the carefree sense that you may have come looking for.

The issue here, and the risk taken by other games as well, is that there’s an assumption that it’s clear to the player what any given level is looking for in the way of a solution. Well-designed games can absolutely pull this off, putting you into a situation where you don’t need to be explicitly told what to do, but you can nevertheless divine what needs to be done and get to it. But what happens if your base sensibilities with a given puzzle apparently don’t line up with what was intended? When I brushed up against that once, though it was irritating I wrote it off. Twice, I was a little more concerned. But a third time and the bottom of it sort of fell out for me. If you’re not going to provide any up-front guidance, hints, or anything else to help someone who manages to get stuck, you need to be incredibly sure that you’ve set the stage for the player to be aligned with what you’re looking for. If they instead organize things differently, and that won’t work, and they’re given no meaningful feedback to know how to proceed, you’ve instead failed in your design fundamentals.