A FOLD APART Review for Steam

Have you ever been in love? Experience a couple’s heart wrenching separation over a long-distance relationship, overcoming obstacles to make it back to each other. Fold the paper to reunite the couple and to advance them in both their relationship and making it through life alone. Experience every emotion with them, side by side. In A Fold Apart, by developer Lightning Rod Games, you cannot help but feel for them and stay at the edge of your seat hoping that they will be together again soon. As you advance through their journey, there are seemingly endless paper folding possibilities.

 I admittedly had to use some hints for parts of the story. This is a game that challenges your puzzle-solving skills and your ability to think ahead. A Fold Apart is inclusive of different types of relationships, both heterosexual and same-sex relationships, which is pretty cool and progressive.

This is a very addicting game that makes you not want to stop playing it, finding new puzzles along the way, and following the star-crossed lovers journey, experiencing every up and down in their relationship. I became quite invested in the relationship and found myself wanting to complete more and more puzzles, not only because it was fun and challenging, but because I wanted to find out if the relationship would work out. The player is also given options on how to reply to text messages between the couple, essentially determining the course that their journey takes from each checkpoint. One upsetting text can set one of the people in the relationship into a dark mood, both sad and angry, at different times.

I experienced both as I was playing and holding the couple’s future in my hands. In the parts where they are separated, the tone and feel of the storyline is incredibly sad and you can feel every emotion that the couple is feeling, or at least I did. It is pretty difficult to not relate to their situation, even if you have never been in a long-distance relationship, you most likely have experienced some sort of heartbreak in your life. A Fold Apart was actually, perhaps not coincidentally, based upon a long-distance relationship that the developers experienced in real life. The fact that this game is based upon reality, I think adds to the emotional roller-coaster that it is trying to express through the screen.

The soundtrack is somber at the points where one part of the couple is sad, hyped up when they are angry, and cheerful when they are happy or together for the moment. These soundtracks add tension and solace to the storyline. This buildup of emotions creates this sort of urgency to reunite the couple, having them follow each other into a dream land for a short while. Their time apart seems a lot longer than their time together, which is a further illustration of the struggles of being in a long-distance relationship.

A majority of this game is reliant on the storyline because the emotions of the couple are essential to the player’s understanding of the situation and why the puzzles of the page folding and flipping are set up the way that they are. Even though the majority of the storyline was wistful, it was easy to follow and kept me engaged all the way through. I will gladly give A Fold Apart a rating of 9/10.

Check Out the A Fold Apart Launch Trailer:

A Fold Apart releases today, April 17, 2020 on Apple Arcade for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Apple TV, and Mac alongside Nintendo Switch and Windows PC via Steam.

For more information, please visit: https://lightningrodgames.com/a-fold-apart/

Courtney La Verne

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I am an army veteran and currently a sophomore at Portland State University majoring in English. I have always looked to gaming as an outlet outside of my everyday life and a way to experiment with playing different types of games and take on new and exciting characters with different backgrounds. It's kind of like getting to become a new person every time you play a game.

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