As part of one’s Nintendo Switch Online subscription, apparently free game trials are available, in which you have a limited time to play a game for free.  I just found this out recently when Nintendo emailed me about a game trial for a puzzle game called A Little to the Left.  I had about a week to complete the game, and my obsessive self zoomed through it over the course of a couple hours.  And while I got 100%, I’m not ashamed to admit that…I cheated a little to get there.  Okay, I cheated a lot.  Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop me from being able to write a brief review to let you guys know how my experience was.

This is a puzzle game centered around organization, on the most part.  Organizing objects so they all fit together perfectly, putting things in order of smallest to largest, and sometimes other assorted puzzles, such as one where you put matches in differently colored match boxes to change their colors.  Some objectives have two or even three ways to solve them, each solution giving you a star.  And if you get stuck, you can get a hint, which sometimes gives you helpful tips…when it’s not outright showing you the solution.  And sometimes, your cat will get involved, swatting at things and leaving paw prints.  I like any game with a cat in it.  Though I must admit that the cat doesn’t really feel like a necessary part of the experience, and sometimes I feel like it makes an appearance just to justify being mentioned in the game’s description.  (But again, is that a bad thing? No.)

If you’re the kind of person who finds it satisfying to organize objects, then you’ll probably like this game.  And I’ll go one step further and recommend Unpacking, a game which Cary reviewed here and I reviewed over on my own blog.  Now, there is one flaw both games have, and that is…they can both be rather tedious and a bit confusing at times.

You see, my kind of puzzle games are more along the lines of When the Past Was Around and The Almost Gone, which I can play for hours without growing tired.  These have you searching your environment for clues and…to be honest, I’m not totally sure how to describe them.  They’re just not centered around shapes and organization, which is something I find fun in small doses, but it quickly becomes boring if I play for too long.

Secondly, both of these puzzle games could be needlessly confusing sometimes.  While Unpacking could baffle me when it chose to be inexplicably picky about item placement (why couldn’t the hot water bottle/sweater thingy go in a drawer?!), sometimes I had no clue as to the logic behind some of this game’s solutions.  For example, there was one calendar puzzle early on that made no logical sense at all (I’m not sure if the hint was helpful, as I used a Youtube guide to solve it), and then I remember this 3×3 grid of 9 rocks that must be arranged in different, specific ways.  I figured out one variation, but what was special about the other arrangement?  I dunno.  Fortunately, you can outright skip any puzzle you don’t want to complete, so at least that’s a nice little feature.

With that said, I did generally enjoy this game…even if it did frustrate me at times.  And if I wasn’t obsessive, and if it wasn’t a limited time trial, I would have had more fun if I played in shorter bursts.  The game is certainly relaxing and has a simple, but pleasant, color palette and chill music, too.  There is a good variety of puzzles, as well, considering what seems like a limited topic to cover.  (Some standout ones for me was the one with the boxes and the one where you make the shape of the heart with the lights.)  A Little to the Left is available on PC and all modern consoles for $14.99 and takes 4-10 hours to complete, depending on if you want to get all those stars or not.

All screenshots come from Secret Mode’s official trailer