Unravel Review

Unravel is a challenging and beautiful looking platformer which has been released by EA, You control Yarny who is made out of…..yep you guessed it Yarn.

It begins with a little back story of an elderly lady sitting down looking over scrap books and reminiscing over past moments, but when she leaves Yarny appears and your game begins.

The main menu is really clever and interactive with Yarny climbing up and down the side tables and chairs to get to the photo frame which begins you missions. There are 10 missions in total all with secrets hidden in them, the goal is to find the lost memories that are missing in the old ladies scrapbook.

As the mission begun i was immediately in awe at the beauty this game spans at, the environment looks so real and is also living in the background so wind blows the leaves away, hedgehogs walk around (at first glance i got worried as i thought the hedgehog was going to hurt my little yarn of life).

Unravel requires you to work with tricky but competent controls to navigate around the missions, it is a side scroller so there is no way you can get lost, maybe stuck on the obstacles but apart from that it’s a friendly version of Sonic the Hedgehog…(maybe that’s why the hedgehog was there????). I did find it frustrating when the rappelling in this game as it requires you to use the RT to do so and if you let go he falls to the ground. the environment can be used to your advantage with acorns and apples to soda cans being used as apparatus to get higher.

The is a way to create a bridge to propel you higher but if you hold the X button it cancels out, this seemed to be something that didn’t stick in my mind as i kept doing it. There are collectables throughout the missions and memories to find and store for the scrap book.

“it’s a friendly version of Sonic the Hedgehog…”

No i know you’re a piece of yarn how can he die? Well he can Unravel to which he does this really cute animation where he tugs on the trailing yarn to try and go further, the game is set up really well with all checkpoints aiding Yarny with extra yarn that he wraps around him to allow him to go on further.

What can i say about the environments? They were inspired by lush environments of Northern Scandinavia and like i mentioned before are truly remarkable. But using Yarnys thread you can use it to your advantage, from swinging from trees to get higher or using tricycles to unlock garden gates and even to flying a kite in and around the forest.

The story is told with using any words which is amazing, it really makes you connect with what they’re trying to do, my only cause for concern is the music can get a little boring after a while, it felt like i was watching a kids tv show in the morning. The Puzzles are truly a breath of fresh air for the genre as they mainly just mean go from one end to the other but games like Limbo have asked players to use their heads as Unravel does.