A Little to the Left PS5 Review – The central concept of A Little to the Left is a stroke of creative genius as you’re tasked with tidying up imagined household messes with various creative solutions. This novel concept more or less defines the entire game and creates a very relaxing experience in the right hands. This collection brings the base game and the DLC expansion into a single package that offers hours of methodical sorting puzzles.
Unfortunately, A Little to the Left manages to stray from enjoyable organisational puzzling into some frustrating and finicky solutions that weren’t helped by the game being mapped onto controllers when it feels suited for touchscreens.
A Little to the Left Review (PS5) – Organised Chaos
Spring Cleaning
A Little to the Left is a game all about tidying up messes. The game wastes absolutely no time with premises or plot devices, just setting you off on your quiet journey to tidy various household messes. This lends the game a real sense of simplicity that I appreciated being able to dive into whenever I felt the need to.
The puzzles themselves take the form of almost any household mess you can imagine, with bookshelves, kitchen drawers and stacks of game cartridges taking up the majority of the puzzles. Because of this, the game really doesn’t need to spend any time teaching you anything about particular controls or mechanics.
A Little to the Left basically asks you to make things look as nice as possible and that definitely scratched an itch for me. Each “chapter” of the game is themed around different household items, with one chapter being all about general items around the home, where another one might hone in on organising kitchen cupboards. Every new chapter was something new and I enjoyed seeing what creative puzzles would come next, with some imaginative, yet clear solutions.
There is a simplistic but appealing art style that unifies these puzzles together and shows a clear sense of what needs to be done while remaining visually appealing. Managing to make the inherently mundane into something I was actually excited to do is a remarkable achievement in and of itself.
All of this brought together by a minimalist but well-used score only accents the methodical nature of the game as a whole, and it all comes together to make a puzzle game that I spent far more time than I expected, with an innate satisfaction in just moving items around.
Furry Foes
While I wouldn’t say that A Little to the Left has a “villain” per se, the main draw of the game is the cat that gets in the way of your organising and occasionally appears to lend a paw to your efforts. That is to say, it causes a mess.
As intrusive as the cat is meant to be, it never felt like too much of an obstacle and was instead more of a pleasant surprise as I got into the routine of sorting out these puzzles. I enjoyed seeing the cat appear on screen and shuffling things about, and I imagine the novelty will absolutely not be lost on cat owners.
If anything, I wish the cat appeared more during my playthrough, as it felt slightly underutilized in the puzzle-solving of the game as I feel like it lends a really unique angle that could have been explored that little bit more.
Growing Pains
While I did find myself generally enjoying my time with the game, I did come across a few snags here and there that led to some frustrating puzzle experiences that brought me out of the zen. Moving items around particular boards could be slightly finicky as I was trying to figure out the solutions to various problems.
These were irregular enough that it never became a consistent problem, but I did find myself butting heads with some of the more precise puzzles in the game as I had to rely on stick controls to move a cursor and grab items. In scenarios like this, it is clear to see that the game might not have been designed with this control scheme in mind.
Even when getting close to certain solutions, I found myself grappling with a control scheme that didn’t quite want to give me the precision that I needed. And while these problems could always be navigated around, it did take me out of an experience that is clearly intended to be calming and relaxing.
A Helping Hand
A Little to the Left is determined to be a relaxing game above all else, and this shows in how you navigate the game itself. Graciously, you are free to skip any particular puzzle that you might find unappealing or too challenging, without any punishment to yourself. Kindly, this option is labelled “Let It Be” instead of something like “Skip Puzzle.”
This small detail helped me not to feel pressured to keep pushing against a puzzle I didn’t understand or enjoy. People’s approaches to organisation emerge in a myriad of ways and it’s nice of the game to not punish those who might struggle with particular tasks.
As well as this, a hint system has been included that offers some helpful ideas about how exactly you can solve the current puzzle should you choose to. By erasing pencil marks on a covered page, you can uncover specific sections of the puzzle you might be struggling with, or for as much of a hint as you would like.
This dedication to comfort and allowing players to engage with help as much or as little as they want is a great benefit for a puzzle game like this and really helps to keep frustrations as low as possible.
A Little to the Left is a satisfyingly methodical puzzler that had me feeling relaxed from the minute I started shifting items around. Every part of the game feels intricately crafted to feel as relaxing as possible and each puzzles offers a real sense of satisfaction that I don’t often get from other games.
Some small issues with cursor movement had me struggling to solve some puzzles but these issues were far from prominent and made little impact on my enjoyment overall. I look forward to returning to this game to decompress in the future.