A Little to the Left offers a fairly simple puzzle game with multiple solutions to the puzzles, as the two-person team developing the title didn’t want players to feel stuck on any one puzzle. While the introductory puzzles had one solution each, I could see a few different ways to approach certain puzzles once I got into the later levels. Speaking with Annie Macmillan as I played, the team at Max Inferno didn’t want to overwhelm the player or make them frustrated with trying to decipher the clutter for any one specific solution. For example, one of the final puzzles in my demo was a cluster of six keys of various sizes and colors. This particular puzzle had not just one or two but three different solutions to complete to earn multiple stars for the challenge. The obvious solution I saw most players go for was simply to sort the keys from largest to smallest (or vice versa). Another solution that wasn’t as immediately apparent was looking at the holes atop the key to sort them by ascending number, from one hole to six. Lastly, the third solution that took some time to figure out was looking at the notches and ridges of the keys themselves. The various shapes hid numbers in less obvious ways to determine the correct order. I’m eager to see the wider variety of puzzles to come in A Little to the Left (and hopefully more ways to interact with the household cat that’s constantly plotting to mess with your current puzzle). The developers always wish to integrate a puzzle of the day challenge to keep drip-feeding more content into the full release, ensuring there are a plethora of puzzles to keep players engaged. These will come by way of the Daily Tidy, a variation on existing puzzles already in-game. Out of the box, expect more than seventy-five puzzles and tiny stacks of clutter to set in line. A Little to the Left will arrive from Secret Mode and Max Inferno Games across both Nintendo Switch and PC (Steam) later this year.
