Maquette

The puzzle game Maquette challenges your heart as much as your head. Set in a dreamlike, San Francisco-inspired realm nested between smaller and larger versions of itself, your goal is simply to pick things up and put them down, which is a whole lot more complicated than it sounds. Any changes you make in the “small” world affect the “big” world and the “normal” world, too, turning every puzzle into a multi-pronged spatial problem. Throughout, you’ll get a front-row seat to a narrated yarn about a couple (voiced by IRL couple Bryce Dallas Howard and Seth Gabel) during every stage of their relationship. Yes, Maquette is at its core a love story that strives to say a lot—about how easily a small spark can ignite a roiling romantic fire, how that fire can burn incandescently and nigh indefinitely, how it consumes all the oxygen in the room until, one day, that oxygen’s all used up and the fire goes out, leaving nothing but an unlit space, almost comforting in its cold grace—and succeeds in doing so. Killer soundtrack, too

Playable On: PS4, PS5, PC

Rough Average Playtime: 4 hours