Maquette Review (Ax)
BEAR IN MIND: There is apparently a game-breaking bug towards the end of this game. I and others were able to get around it by restarting the level, but some weren't so lucky, so keep this in mind when buying and for this reason (as well as in general) I'd recommend getting this at a steep sale. Unless you somehow get really, really emotionally invested, then the last few minutes aren't so special that you'll feel really cheated out of the experience, though. (Imho the really cool shit is a couple levels before that.)
So that said: I really enjoyed the gameplay and the physics. I managed to escape the Maquette to game-breaking levels, repeatedly, and had a great time with that. There's an eeriness to being in the larger versions that the game really leans into, and I found most of the physics-based puzzles clever, but arranging things in the smallest Maquette (and even in the larger one) can be really finicky (especially if you're engineering a plan to escape to places the game emphatically doesn't want you to go). I had some nice little "aha!" moments and some times I had to check a walkthrough (I kept forgetting you can technically achieve goals in any size of Maquette) and the later levels actually get incredibly spectacular. There's a specific image that will absolutely haunt me (in a good way) and no doubt be a source of inspiration in the future.
That said, there's like...a story to this? With some kind of a romance? Idk, it seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the Maquette except as a physical representation of the world created by the characters' relationship, but it's honestly so loosely connected that it feels like the story got slapped on top of the gimmick in a hurry. I like the sketching motif, and how the drawings change to reflect the characters' emotional perspectives, and maybe if it had gone a little deeper with the story or created a way to more clearly tie the relationship to the level design then I would like it more. As it stands though, it's a really good idea for a game that could definitely be more fleshed out in its execution, and a really boring story that seems to be trying to Dear Esther a game that doesn't need it. I'm reminded of Mind: Path to Thalamus, which had the same entrancing visuals paired with a story that I absolutely could not have cared less about.
Tl;dr: Play it for the visuals and the gimmick, it's not for people who need a well-rounded story with their game, and be mindful of the game-breaking bug.