A good puzzle game brings a very particular type of joy to my gaming brain. Fitting all the pieces together perfectly rewards you with a feeling of accomplishment, a hit of dopamine, and pushes you to do “just one more” on your quest to repeat that feeling. Is This Seat Taken?, the debut game from Poti Poti Studio, nails that premise as one of the more engaging puzzle games I’ve played in awhile.
Window Seat Please
Simplicity in puzzle mechanics, and the charming art style, are the biggest pulls in Is This Seat Taken?, helping the game to be enjoyable for its handful of hours. The base gameplay is straightforward enough, each level sets you in a new location, looking to place characters into different seating arrangements. This can vary from a simple bus filled with stinky children, to soccer stands where you need to make sure opposing fans aren’t cheering too loudly at each other. Every character has a preference of where they want to sit, whether it’s facing the same way as the limo is driving to avoid sickness, or in the middle of a boat to avoid getting splashed. Keeping everyone happy is the main challenge of the game, seeing as some of them are directly conflicting while juggling the limited space, but this loop of making every passenger smile before moving onto the next scenario kept me chasing that 100% satisfaction at every screen.
The Places You’ll Go
With this being a cozy puzzle game first and foremost, the dressing around that was not as engaging, but still enjoyable enough as a motivation to progress. We follow our main character, Nat, an aspiring actor looking to make it big time. The storyline brings us some fun and quippy dialogue, as well as a driving force to take us across the globe, from London to New York to Brussels. My only real negative would come from this part of the game, as I enjoyed the cheeky back and forths well enough, but it didn’t fully engage me and have me wondering what was next. As a reason to do a new puzzle set on a train, it worked well enough, but was ultimately forgettable.
Final Verdict
Cozy gaming is not my main genre of gaming, but Is This Seat Taken? gives me that good brain feeling as I perfected each scenario. While I found the story not entirely interesting, the gameplay loop kept me more than intrigued as I kept passengers happy across its many levels. If doing a few levels before bed had a poster child, I could see this game contending for that prize.
Is This Seat Taken? was reviewed on PC with a code provided by Poti Poti Studios. It is also available on Nintendo Switch and mobile.
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The Review
PROS
- Fun and engaging puzzle design
- Good aesthetics and soundtrack
CONS
- Story elements only provide small distraction between levels
