Is This Seat Taken? review — If I fits, I sits

Puzzling normally invites mystery and conspiracies; think Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Golden Idol, both proper nitty-gritty games you can sink your detective brain into, or they can be simple puzzles where you have to figure out where everyone’s ideal seating position is. And it’s just as fun! Is this seat taken? It is a logic puzzle game where you’ll be given certain settings where fussy people will have requirements for where they want to sit. I played the demo back at Steam Next Fest, and despite its mundane concept, it was intuitive and offered some great challenges. Fast forward to its full release, and I still hold to that statement and think the finished product is even better than what I was expecting.

Is This Seat Taken? is separated into 5 locations, each taking place in famous cities across the world. In these cities, you’ll face 5 scenarios, each with around 5-6 levels, that revolve around placing things in the right spot. If you’re struggling, you don’t need to satisfy every customer, and you can revisit if need be, so there’s not too much pressure. However, if you do end up going for 100% satisfaction, at the end of each level, you’ll be rewarded with a bonus level, so there’s a lot of content to sink your teeth into. Each city plays into the theming of the levels, too, which was a nice touch. For example, you’d place acting students in a film class in New York, and each location would be connected by a mode of transport, like the tube from Brussels to London. A lot of care and thought went into the mapping of these levels, and it helped create a small world within this game that I didn’t realize I needed.

Other great methods of immersion were the use of recurring characters and plotlines you can follow throughout the game. You’ll notice you can unlock achievements where you first meet important characters, and each will have their own mini story to tell. Following Nat’s venture to fame as she chases her celebrity hero through the cities was light-hearted fun and only needed to be that in this puzzle game—obviously, don’t expect anything amazing; it’s just a nice touch. Characters are also quippy, constantly making shape-related jokes and often gossiping about other shapes; a lot of drama goes on in this world! The locations also provide nice levels of immersion, with different weather and items you can interact with, even if interaction means it only jiggles a bit.

Now, let’s get to the puzzles. This game lets the player in gently through its mechanics, but don’t think this is a breeze of a game; the difficulty ramps up aptly and will have you scratching your head more than a few times. The core of its gameplay is that you get a scenario and a bunch of NPCs to sit with. When you hover over them, they’ll have conditions you need to meet so they are happy. These will start simple, like Ajay wants to sit next to Celia, or I want to sit next to the window, but NPCs will often have more than one condition to meet in later levels, upping the difficulty.

When deciding where to place NPCs, you’ll also have to consider external effects that can upset or satisfy people. On a bus in the hot summer, some NPCs will want to sit in the direction of the AC, and some won’t. Other factors like smelly people or people who wear too much cologne also affect whole seating plans, as when you place them, their smell will stretch to the surrounding squares around them, so you’ll have to watch out for those who don’t fancy smelling somebody’s odor. These requests become harder and more intricate to consider as you gain more and more people in smaller spaces. In some later scenarios, you’ll need to make sure everyone is in the right seat, without having much room for error.

People are not the only things you’ll see as the game adds fun bonus puzzles to the added chaos of finding the right seat. This can include making sure specific plates of food are in the vicinity of people who want to eat that food or arranging luggage on a train so it’ll all fit. There’s so much fun to be had here that this game becomes my new favorite downtime in the evenings. My only complaint is a lack of a ‘reset’ button when you’re stumped and feel like everything’s gone wrong. Instead, you need to do the mundane task of dragging everyone off the seats to start again.