Developer: REDDEER.GAMES
Publisher: REDDEER.GAMES
Platform: Switch (2)
Tested on: Switch 2
Pick & Place – Review
It hasn’t been a hot minute since we last took a look at a cozy puzzle game, but by this point, you’re probably aware that we enjoy relaxing, bite-sized palate cleansers in between our meatier games. Last time we took a look at one of these, we found ourselves unpacking things in Unbox the Room. This time around, we’re doing the opposite, as the point of Pick & Place is to put things away neatly. Should you pick this one and place it in your library the next time you visit the Nintendo eShop?
Story
There is a wide variety of different themes and settings across Pick & Place’s puzzles: one minute you’re arranging food in a fridge and the next you’re lining up the roots of a flower. There is seemingly no rhyme or reason to what you’ll encounter next. The lack of connection between the different puzzles makes it so that the game is devoid of even environmental storytelling. As such, there are no narrative elements in Pick & Place whatsoever, not even the vaguest of premises. While a story isn’t a necessity in a straight-up puzzle game like this, it would’ve been nice if the puzzles had been arranged in a way that made sense. That the puzzles feel all over the place is something that is also apparent in the gameplay, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
Graphics
To the game’s credit, the pixel art looks absolutely lovely, even if it isn’t always clear which puzzle object is supposed to represent what. Pick & Place’s pastel-tinted color scheme contributes to the feeling of cosiness that the game goes for. The game’s performance is good, though that shouldn’t be too surprising given that this isn’t the most demanding game.
Sound
As you make your way through Pick & Place’s different puzzles, you’re accompanied by different musical tunes, ranging from soothing piano music to cheerful melodies. Interestingly enough, the individual tunes aren’t tied to specific puzzles. When you restart a puzzle, you might suddenly hear another piece of music in the background. Music makes up around 95% of Pick & Place’s soundscape, as there is no ambience or dialogue in the game and sound effects are very limited. They’re mostly used to give you feedback when placing things and confirming when you’ve successfully completed the puzzle at hand.
Gameplay
As the game’s title so subtly explains, Pick & Place is a puzzle game where you… pick and place things. There are 40 puzzles, and although these vary wildly when it comes to execution, the general idea remains the same: you need to put everything in order. We’re proponents of the idea that a simple concept often leads to the best puzzles; we can’t deny that Pick & Place is uneven at nailing its concept at best. There are several issues here that prevent the game from coming even close to its full potential. The first red flag here is the onboarding, or the complete lack thereof. There is no guidance here whatsoever: no tutorial, not even a simple, one-sentence explanation of the different puzzle mechanics. Usually, a puzzle game like this eases you into how everything works, but even that isn’t the case here. The first puzzle tasks you with packing a suitcase, and there are pre-cut shapes to fit the objects into. What the game doesn’t tell you is that you need to combine specific objects first before they fit into the suitcase. Which objects go together? That’s for you to figure out, with the help of our old friend, Mr. Trial-and-error. Granted, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out, but the lack of guidance doesn’t bode well for the more complex puzzles.
Which brings us to the order in which the puzzles are presented. There is no logical buildup here. One puzzle can be ridiculously easy and the next will knock you for a loop, before the game returns to an insultingly simple one. Even the internal logic isn’t always consistent. Sometimes you need to drag objects around to the desired position, and at other times you need to click and swap things around. Some puzzles will have you match a mirrored image, others require you to slide things around until they snap into place, and some others are just outright frustrating. Take a look at the screenshot of puzzle #15 above, for example. The aim here is to line up both rows of objects so that they all would “fit” into one another, like puzzle pieces. This is easy enough for the top row, but the bottom row took us more tries to figure out than we’d care to admit. (The screenshot is the solution, by the way, if you happen to have gotten stuck on that one.) It would have helped if Pick & Place had put its puzzles in order of difficulty, or if it had included an option to skip a puzzle and return to it later, but now these puzzles act like walls that prevent you from progressing.
Completing a puzzle will reward you with gold stars… sometimes. Most puzzles will only award one star, although some can reward you with two. There is, again, no rhyme or reason to it. An early game puzzle where you need to arrange books to form the silhouette of a cat is worth up to two stars, whereas that dreaded puzzle #15 is only worth one star… and don’t even get us started on puzzle #23. The two-star puzzles are also randomly distributed among the others, so it’s not a difficulty thing… we think? We’re not even sure what the criteria for awarding stars are. Is it time? Number of moves or clicks it took you to finish the puzzle? The game simply doesn’t tell you. While some of the individual puzzles are definitely fun, the game’s overarching structure (or lack thereof) undermines the concept.
Conclusion
There definitely is some merit to the individual puzzles that Pick & Place has to offer, but the overall lack of guidance and the strange order in which the puzzles appear make this one a game that we have mixed feelings about. The concept is simple enough, but there are other games out there that do similar things better… or at least more consistently. While we won’t outright dismiss Pick & Place as a whole, this is the kind of puzzle game we’d put on the “maybe” list, for when you want to scratch that itch and have run out of other similar games to play.
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