Maquette was first-announced almost a year ago now, and I honestly kind of forgot about it for awhile. With the usual packed release schedule and the general craziness of 2020, I suppose it was rather easy for a quirky indie game to get lost in the hustle of it all. All that said though, Annapurna Interactive put out a new trailer for the game this week, and I’m finding myself excited for it all over again. Check it out below!

In earlier trailers and media, very little was revealed about Maquette other than its rather unique gameplay twist: its world is recursive. Lemme explain: Maquette is a puzzle game where in the player has to alter the world in order to progress. They need to move stuff around, find keys, make bridges and so on; it’s all to keep moving forward and possibly out of this strange world they’re stuck in. What’s so strange about it? The fact that it keeps repeating over and over.

The world of Maquette is a world expressed in layers. That is: copies of the same world that keep getting larger with each repetition. All changes made to one layer affect all others. The player could place a block in a small layer and see that same block drop into their layer too (only it’s a giant block now). It’s in this way that the player must open up avenues of exploration and perhaps even eventual escape. Meanwhile there’s a story playing out about the complicated relationship between two lovers: Kenzie and Michael, and this world is probably meant to be some sort of metaphor for the cycles their relationship follows.

I’m not so sure if I’m gonna dig the story, but I love puzzle games. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen a game offer such a unique and interesting puzzle idea, not since Portal. I’d like to say this’ll be a Day 1 buy for me, but you never know. It’s definitely on the “must-play” list at least. Hopefully Maquette doesn’t get buried again before its March 2nd release date.

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What do you think of Maquette? Do you find this recursion idea fascinating too?

image captured from Maquette “Cast Reveal” trailer