Perfectly encapsulates the timeless conundrum, of what I like to call the Golf With Your Friends Skill Check, or the "GWYFSK" as its popularly known worldwide.

If I beat you, its because you don't have friends, so you never actually played golf with them to get good at.

If you beat me, its because but you don't have friends, so you spent hours practicing in this game just by yourself.

What side of the GWYFSK do you fall on?

I have a lot of gripes with Assemble With Care, but I feel bad about disliking it in the ways I do. It's a tiny indie title with a heartfelt presentation and narrative, casting the player as a sort of wish-granter through her astute ability to repair broken items. This, as a concept, is perfectly fit to be a game I love and cherish with open arms. Where it falters is execution, because both the story and gameplay have this lumbering sense of awkwardness attached that leave me questioning what the intended experience was.

The story is delivered through visual-novel segments that bookend the main gameplay sections. The voice acting is fine, though a bit stiff and kinda kiddy for my taste. Among many issues I take is the interpersonal relationships your clients have with you and each other. Helena is irrevocably mean to Carmen, and though there is legitimate reason for her to be upset with her little sister, the entire situation resolves in a very neat and contrived ending where the two agree to live with each-other over the span of a couple days, seemingly on a whim. The ending of their story arc suggests that they have things to work out still but, because the characters at the end suddenly come off as hunky-dory, I have no reason to believe that. I have a similar gripe with how Joseph treats her daughter Izzy, the speed at which these characters heal or soothe their bonds are just unrealistic to my experiences. I understand that this is a short game and thus the story needs to be similarly tight, but I don't think the correct angle was to set the story beats so close to each other.

The gameplay follows a similar issue in that its brevity makes each individual 'puzzle' feel lackluster. Save for the epilogue, most of the disassembly and reassembly processes are too easy to feel as gratifying as I would like. It never truly feels like I'm 'fixing' anything beyond reconnecting wires. There's none of the revelation or drama inherent in repairing a game console or assembling a complicated piece of tech, it's all just sanded into this clean and easy installation of wires that, at its most difficult, is mildly confusing for a minute before you double-check. A comprehensive assembly or repair game is something I would like to play, but I got next to nothing from the puzzles in this game aside from frustration because of how the fidgety selection mechanic is. The post-release epilogue puzzle was the first piece to give me something for my brain to chew on, a three-dimensional wire-crossing with enough complexity to be a neat curiosity. It's a shame that it's one out of fourteen.

Assemble With Care has the concept of an incredibly intriguing game, but instead of developing it with more gratifying puzzle craft and fleshed-out storytelling, it stops short and provides a mildly frustrating story with an equally placid and frustratingly easy set of puzzles.

I have a lot of gripes with Assemble With Care, but I feel bad about disliking it in the ways I do. It's a tiny indie title with a heartfelt presentation and narrative, casting the player as a sort of wish-granter through her astute ability to repair broken items. This, as a concept, is perfectly fit to be a game I love and cherish with open arms. Where it falters is execution, because both the story and gameplay have this lumbering sense of awkwardness attached that leave me questioning what the intended experience was.

The story is delivered through visual-novel segments that bookend the main gameplay sections. The voice acting is fine, though a bit stiff and kinda kiddy for my taste. Among many issues I take is the interpersonal relationships your clients have with you and each other. Helena is irrevocably mean to Carmen, and though there is legitimate reason for her to be upset with her little sister, the entire situation resolves in a very neat and contrived ending where the two agree to live with each-other over the span of a couple days, seemingly on a whim. The ending of their story arc suggests that they have things to work out still but, because the characters at the end suddenly come off as hunky-dory, I have no reason to believe that. I have a similar gripe with how Joseph treats her daughter Izzy, the speed at which these characters heal or soothe their bonds are just unrealistic to my experiences. I understand that this is a short game and thus the story needs to be similarly tight, but I don't think the correct angle was to set the story beats so close to each other.

The gameplay follows a similar issue in that its brevity makes each individual 'puzzle' feel lackluster. Save for the epilogue, most of the disassembly and reassembly processes are too easy to feel as gratifying as I would like. It never truly feels like I'm 'fixing' anything beyond reconnecting wires. There's none of the revelation or drama inherent in repairing a game console or assembling a complicated piece of tech, it's all just sanded into this clean and easy installation of wires that, at its most difficult, is mildly confusing for a minute before you double-check. A comprehensive assembly or repair game is something I would like to play, but I got next to nothing from the puzzles in this game aside from frustration because of how the fidgety selection mechanic is. The post-release epilogue puzzle was the first piece to give me something for my brain to chew on, a three-dimensional wire-crossing with enough complexity to be a neat curiosity. It's a shame that it's one out of fourteen.

Assemble With Care has the concept of an incredibly intriguing game, but instead of developing it with more gratifying puzzle craft and fleshed-out storytelling, it stops short and provides a mildly frustrating story with an equally placid and frustratingly easy set of puzzles.