I do mention that updates could be sporadic, and often what I focus on could seem a little unusual considering this site’s name. But hey, ReStory does feature representations of some much loved retro consoles and controllers (as well as quirky tech) so I’m claiming to have not drifted too far off track. Plus I’ve been playing/enjoying it a lot the last couple of weeks and felt like jotting down my thoughts.

ReStory lives up to that ‘Chill’ part of its name pretty perfectly. While I’ll enjoy and try to pretend that I’m getting better at Sol-Deace or pretty much any R-Type game, in my more mature gaming years (I’m old) I do yearn for something slightly less frantic at the end of a working day when I’m eager to decompress.

And ReStory does that perfectly. The story – which I admit I didn’t spend too much time trying to digest – plods along in short little bouts of text from a bunch of different static characters entirely at the pace you want. Yes you can rush through, doing the jobs the story deems necessary for progression and hit the next beat in next to no time. But the game has no issues with you slowly tinkering and fixing some dinky little devices at your own pace, and it’ll not try and encourage you to speed up, or scold you for taking your time. It puts you in control, and blimey that’s a very nice thing for this sort of game.

Playing it is very simple. You take on a repair job of a particular device, drag it onto your desk, take it apart, clean/repair/paint as required, then it gets picked up and you receive a wedge of cash. There’s nothing hectic or pressured about it. It feels calm and comfortable with you simply tinkering until you eventually end up with a finished repair.

I played with mouse and keyboard, and tinkering in general works perfectly. A simple tap and hold to unscrew, a click and hold to take things apart and drop them on your desk, and the same again to put them in place. It’s intuitive, simple, and the white highlights that pop up when you’re clearly trying to put the right piece X into slot Y avoids any major frustration when you’re faced with slotting together a mildly complicated laptop or old school film camera.

It’s not perfect. Some items towards the latter stages do feel a little too complicated. And sometimes that flash of white to indicate you’re doing the right thing pops up only when you’re hovering over a seemingly unconnected part of the device. But these are generally very minor frustrations that last a matter of seconds.

You can, if you so wish, take part in challenges to earn more cash but need to put all the pieces of a console, joystick, mobile phone and so on, together in the exact order or you have to start from the beginning. I’m not the sort of person who needs to feel like they’ve done absolutely everything in a game so I only did some of the simpler devices, and it’s not a requirement to finish the story. But it does add a healthy bit of challenge for those who might desire it.

You can happily upgrade your equipment as you go to make cleaning for example much quicker. You have to earn the money to buy licenses to fix certain devices. You get a steady stream of jobs that outside of the ones required to push the story along you choose to do. It’s a tight gameplay loop that gives you a lot of power to play it as you so wish, but still can gently nudge you forward without being pushy about it.

The visual style is overall very charming. And the intricate details as you take apart the devices themselves are a bit of a joy. It really does make me want to take apart my old PS1 and PSP (though they’re not called exactly those things in the game, it’s pretty obvious that’s what they’re representing) to see how close it all matches up.

While I’ve finished the story in about 10 hours or so, I’ve not repaired every type of device, nor purchased all the upgrades of licenses. So I could happily spend another half dozen hours with this before it’s uninstalled. And for me that’s exactly what I’d hoped for. A charming game that puts me in control and allows me to decompress after a hard day.

Verdict: Get it bought