A Little to the Left, from indie developer Max Inferno, will test your organizational skills and spatial reasoning. As you’re presented with various scenarios rendered in a cozy hand-drawn aesthetic, your job will be to restore order to the mess. You’ll find yourself adjusting crooked pictures on a wall, organizing a cluttered medicine cabinet, and arranging stars to complete a constellation.
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While the puzzles start simple and relaxing, you’ll gradually see their difficulty pick up as you go. They’re generally a delight to solve, and while some stages can feel like their tedium outweighs the fun, there’s also plenty of freedom to ask for hints or pass on any you aren’t into.
5 Size Up The Situation
One of the most basic methods for applying order to a random group of objects is to organize them by size and shape. They might have to be arranged from small to large, sorted into appropriately sized containers, or assembled as shards of a broken, larger whole. When looking at the items at your disposal, if all of them look different but are the same general type of object (books, pencils, etc.), then the solution is likely based on their size.
Some harder puzzles based on fitting objects into compartments can initially seem overwhelming. If you have tons of different pieces to figure out, start with the most obvious ones and use a process of elimination. Also, don’t forget that objects may have to go in something else, like a jar or box, before you can put them away properly.
4 Go With The Flow
Rather than sorting objects by size, sometimes you have to sort them by visual flow. They might have different colors, so they have to be arranged in a proper gradient of increasing hue, or their shapes might interlock in visually pleasing ways. These puzzles can be sneaky, but if you see a bunch of similarly sized objects with common colors or patterns, that’s probably a sign that there’s a visual story or progression you might be able to create with them.
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Another tip for creating visual flow is to look for items that have parts that stick out and others that have holes or crevices. Even if they’re everyday objects that wouldn’t normally fit together, forget your assumptions about them and instead just think of them as puzzle pieces. Consider how their angles, points, and openings can fit each other to create a cohesive look.
3 Look For Symmetry
If you have a bunch of pairs of objects, then the answer will often be to arrange them in a symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing way. These are some of the most difficult puzzles in the game, as while the developers’ intended solutions do look nice, the answers can also feel subjective. You may have to use some trial and error on these, but it helps to remember the game’s answers favor efficient use of space along with symmetry.
In these puzzles, objects will be drawn to their correct locations if you at least get them close, so you can use that as a sign of when you’re on the right track. Also, make things easier for yourself by identifying if any pieces don’t have a matching pair. Those will go in the middle, and you can use them as an anchor to build the rest of your design around.
2 When In Doubt, Experiment
Sometimes you might not be sure where to begin, but that’s okay. There’s no shame in just grabbing stuff and placing it around randomly. When shuffling your components or clicking around like this, you might see relationships you hadn’t noticed, or realize that those two pieces fit together nicely, or that object does something when you move it, etc.
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Even in its more obscure moments, the game tends to leave little hints or breadcrumbs leading you to the answer if you can figure out what they are. For example, in one stage where you have to hang tools on a wall, the answer at first seems impenetrable. There are so many awkwardly shaped tools, all cluttered in a pile at the bottom, and they hang so precariously that just nudging one tool with another can send everything falling to the table again.
But, note that if you get a tool in the right spot, it will hang securely and can’t be knocked off by the others. It’s a clear sign you got that one right. Watching for little details like this can go a long way in guiding you through a puzzle, even if you’re using a more trial-and-error approach.
1 Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Hints
While ALttL’s stages are usually not too hard, there are a few difficulty spikes along the way and a few where, even if the solution makes sense, it seems a little arbitrary. If you find one that seems too hard, or if you’re just not interested in solving it and want to move on, there are several ways to deal with this.
The game has a generous hint system (that doesn’t penalize you at all) in which you’ll be shown a sketch of the answer with most of the image scribbled out. You can choose how much of the answer you want to peek at, whether it’s just a little hint to check your work or a reveal of the whole thing. You can always skip a puzzle, too, and choose to come back to it later without seeing the answer.
Even after you’ve gotten used to certain types of puzzles, the game will find ways to consistently play with your expectations. Even in the later stages, you’ll be encountering unique challenges, nothing like what you’ve seen before. But if you keep these five things in mind—and again, always focus on the easiest parts of a puzzle first—you’ll be in top shape to take on even the biggest messes A Little to the Left has to offer.
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