Love, it’s a feeling we can’t ignore, although actual relationships might be complicated. A Fold Apart tells the story of two lovers, separated by distance. Long-distance relationships can be rather difficult, even with modern-day technology, it’s easy to misinterpret a message of your significant other. A Fold Apart takes you on such a journey, a journey of love, hope, and doubt.
Divided by work
In A Fold Apart, you’ll follow the story of new lovers, one’s an architect, the other one’s a teacher. They clearly are made for each other and their love is as pure as it gets. The relationship comes under pressure when the architect is offered a job in the big city. Since the teacher has a steady job in another country, they’ll be spending some time separated from each other. Choosing a long-distance relationship isn’t easy but living without each other isn’t an option, they jump in head-first, only to discover that things aren’t always that easy.
The narrative of A Fold Apart is extremely realistic and if you’ve ever experienced a long-distance relationship, it might be a bit too close to home. We constantly see our protagonists struggling with the fact of being apart, living their lives and daily routines in different time-zones. The only way to reach each other is with modern technology but as you might know, texts can easily be misinterpreted if you don’t fully understand the emotions behind it. As the player, it’s your job to connect the world of the lovers in order to maintain that pure love they both felt in the beginning.
Connect two worlds
Besides the emotional narrative, the puzzles are the main attraction of the game. You often meet your partner in your dreams but the moment you start chasing each other, you’ll notice you’ll never be close together if you can’t conquer the lack of ramps and bridges to connect both worlds. It’s here where the puzzles kick in. By folding the screen like paper, you can create ramps and paths out of nowhere. The world is created with paper and as the player, you’re able to manipulate the screens by folding and unfolding the screen, in order to place bridges where you want them to appear. It’s an interesting technique and it certainly offers some of the more original puzzles we’ve ever seen.
It all starts off rather easy with just folding and unfolding to reach your goal but the more you advance, the more difficult it all gets. The game adds objects like climbable rocks to keep things interesting and fresh right until the end of the game. Your journey isn’t really long as it’s easy to finish the game in a couple of hours. Although it’s short, it did ensure the puzzles remain fresh from start to finish. The technique used to solve your problems is extremely interesting and mesmerizing from the start and it never becomes stale thanks to the length of your adventure. The combination of the narrative and puzzles really result in a truly unique game that’s certainly worth checking out, even with the technical issues.
Just like love, it’s not perfect
Although I absolutely adore the narrative and gorgeous environments, the game does suffer from technical issues, frame drops being the main issue here. From time to time, the frame drop will be incredibly noticeable during the puzzles, which of course, takes you out of the moment. Just like love itself, this game isn’t perfect but if you manage to look beyond those small imperfections, you’ll find a lot of warmth. If you struggle with technical performances, this game won’t be for you but if you, just like me, tend to see the beauty behind it, you’re in for one of the better puzzle games currently on the market.
Conclusion:
A Fold Apart offers a unique take on love in games, discussing the difficulties of a long-distance relationship and all the challenges that come with it. Combine this with original puzzle mechanics and you’ll easily understand why this is one of my favorite puzzle games of 2020 so far. It’s a shame the technical issues take you out of the mesmerizing world from time to time but if you manage to ignore those, you’re really in for one emotional yet rewarding journey.
