You have to love indie games. Ideas that probably wouldn’t raise the pulse of the shareholders at Ubisoft or Activision are given the chance to grow and develop, bringing surprises, joy and a range of emotions that their AAA brethren can only hope to emulate. Is This Seat Taken? is the perfect example of this, a cosy puzzler that’s fundamentally about helping people to enjoy where they’re sitting.
As you arrive in each city, beginning in beautiful Bareclona, you’re given a series of stages where the characters have to be appeased. They’re generally going on a journey, so you have to work on the seating arrangements for the trip, dealing with people who can’t face backwards, have forgotten to wash that day, or desperately want to chat to the person next to them.
The problems arise when other people dislike smells, don’t want to talk, or just want to be on their own, forcing you to think long and hard about where they’re going to sit. As you progress, the demands get greater, the dislikes become more wide ranging, and more and more people want to get on the bus. You’ll find yourself shifting people all over the place, like a game of musical chairs for toddlers who may or may not sit in the nearest chair, for reasons known only to them.
It’s not just buses, but cars, cinemas, gigs, diners and various other places where sitting down is a key part of the experience. Fundamentally, the action, such as it is, is the same for each stage, but the changing setups help to keep things interesting, with different needs such as food and drink, friends, belongings and music coming to the fore based on the context.
Is This Seat Taken? is a cosy little view into the human mind. Let’s face it, we’re all a fussy bag of desires and dislikes, and most of the time, we don’t share those with the people we’re put into close proximity with. There’s a key sense of discomfort when you place someone incorrectly, and their face makes sure you know it – I literally couldn’t bring myself to complete a level without achieving a 100% rating. That’s probably made stronger by years working in customer service, but it’s funny to find it so affecting when you’re placing a batch of cartoon shapes into a bus.
Is This Seat Taken? has a simple but lovely art style. Each person is represented by a different shape, and little details such as hats, shoes and earrings to personalise them. The notes you’re given on their needs are also chunky little handwritten lists, with a tickbox to show you’ve got each element right. It’s all enhanced by the chill musical ditties playing in the background, which sit just the right side of elevator music. They don’t distract, instead massaging your clever little brain as you take care of all these needy little shapes.
There’s a few mild foibles to Is This Seat Taken? which take you slightly out of the fiction, not least the food and drink areas where you can sit random people together who’ll dive into the same box of fries or share a cup of coffee. Once you’ve got over that slightly strange fact – made weirder by the notion that people are otherwise so demanding in the game – you can just settle into the calm and enjoyable puzzling. It’s overall not the toughest of games, but everything is so well done that you likely won’t notice.