Players begin A Fold Apart by choosing one of four options for the couple that they will play as in the game, with support for same-sex options. One character is the Teacher and the other is the Architect, who moves away to pursue their dream job elsewhere. The gender and sexuality of each playable character don’t really change the way they interact with each other, and the dialogue doesn’t portray them as distinctly male or female. As a result, neither of the two playable characters has much of a distinguishable personality, and so it’s difficult to become invested in their plight.
The two characters interact with each other mainly through text message, with players sometimes given the option to choose specific things they want to say. But these dialogue choices don’t have any lasting impact on the plot or the game at all. Similarly to how the couple is a benign choice, the dialogue options are only there for window dressing.
The way the characters talk to each other is a little frustrating at times and unrealistic. The game is clearly trying to drum up some emotion by tugging at the heartstrings, but the characters are so plain that it’s just not effective. Perhaps it would have worked better had players been able to spend some time with the characters before they were split up, but as it stands, A Fold Apart starts off with the Architect character having already moved away. There is no time to get invested in the relationship, and so nothing that happens leaves much of an impact.
The long-distance relationship between the Architect and the Teacher is the focal point of A Fold Apart, but since it lands flat, it hurts the entire experience. The main draw of the game is to see what happens next in the story, but A Fold Apart makes it difficult to care what happens to the characters or their relationship. Luckily, it doesn’t put all of its eggs in the narrative basket because it does do some other things much better.
A Fold Apart’s visuals are fantastic, with brilliant contrast between light and dark themes when the characters are happy and sad. There are some eye-catching visual tricks that the developers utilize to tell the story, like when a character is feeling anxiety, for instance. The text their partner sends turns black, the offending words are highlighted red, and the scene turns from bright and sunny to dark and grim pretty fast. The game does a good job of showcasing anxiety and how mental health issues can impact the success or failure of long-distance relationships, so it’s a shame that it doesn’t do much to make players care about the actual relationship being featured.
A Fold Apart also features some fantastic music, with the score emphasizing the tone of each scene perfectly. In many ways, the music does more to evoke an emotional response than the actual narrative. The music combined with the art style give A Fold Apart a unique atmosphere that’s just begging for a more meaningful, meatier story to hang onto.
The gameplay also leaves a lot to be desired in A Fold Apart, though it does have its charm. It’s a puzzle game at its core, with players folding sheets of paper to create paths to stars. New ideas are gradually introduced from one chapter to the next, so players start off just folding the sides of the paper, but then later they have to take corners into account and sometimes even have to rotate the paper to complete puzzles.
A Fold Apart can easily be beaten in 2 hours or less, and so its paper-folding mechanic doesn’t get a chance to breathe. The puzzles themselves are rarely all that difficult, but the game does have a nice hint system in place for whenever players get stuck. The hint system shows players the next step that they need to take to progress the puzzle, which can alleviate a lot of frustration, though it’s possible to abuse it so that the game plays itself.
The hint system does come in handy, though, because sometimes A Fold Apart’s puzzles fail to work properly. There were a few instances where we would try to fold the paper a certain way to complete the puzzle, only for it to fold back over like that wasn’t a valid option. After finally caving in and using a hint, the game then folded the paper in the exact way we were attempting. Knowing that some of the puzzles don’t seem to work right will leave players constantly second-guessing what is and isn’t a valid move, and sucks a lot of the fun out of solving them.
A Fold Apart’s puzzles are serviceable despite the occasional technical problems, but the whole experience lacks the incentive to dig deeper. The game is priced somewhat steep for the content it offers at $20, and it’s hard to recommend it over the many other indie games available that give players significantly more bang for their buck.
A Fold Apart has great music and a great art style, but it’s too short and its story is too uninteresting. Perhaps if the game spent more time developing the characters, its narrative would be more engaging, but as it stands, it’s difficult to recommend it over the many other games with emotional stories out there.
A Fold Apart is out now for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One. Game Rant was provided a PC code for this review.
