If you have experience of the London rental market, there is but one way you can react to a game – a French game, no less, the cultural product of a country where two-bed apartments apparently grow on trees – that promises to maroon you in a sprawling labyrinth of flats. “Haha, alright for some!” you chortle despairingly, after freeing yourself from the laundry basket and retrieving your trousers from the fridge. “I bet labyrinths have more than one window,” you sob, as you yet again tackle the problem of opening the front door without becoming part of the wall.
If you have have experience of the London rental market, you are probably reading this and thinking: “He’s got a front door? Such extravagance. I live in a folded umbrella.” Touché, my friend.
I guess it’s just as well we have spaciously proportioned first-person puzzle adventures to console us in our time of compound elbow bruises, rising damp and preposterous financial debt. On which note, Looking For Fael seems fun. Created by Swing Swing Submarine and published by ARTE, it’s a first-person Myst ‘em up, Witness-a-lot and/or Fez-alike (these are the developers' own stated influences, along with 90s fantasy films) in which you wake up one day to a phone call from your mate Fael, who has gotten lost in his own apartment.
Sallying forth in search of him, you discover that your own flat and its surroundings have gotten all mazey. It’s just as well you remembered your handheld-console-which-is.