“Unreal. Absolutely unreal.” That’s how Wren Brier and Tim Dawson, the creators of Unpacking, described their double win at the BAFTA Games to me last week. So shocked were they at taking home gongs for Narrative and the public voted Game of the Year the couple didn’t even have a speech prepared.
Unpacking’s success has seen the indie “zen puzzle game” beat a number of big AAA games to several awards (not least Eurogamer’s own Game of the Year last year), and find itself cast as a gentle, queer David to the Goliaths of Returnal, It Takes Two, and Metroid Dread.
I caught up with Brier and Dawson before the BAFTAs to discuss the game’s development.
Let’s Play Unpacking – Lo-fi Games to Relax to Watch on YouTube
One of the most powerful aspects of Unpacking’s narrative is that it’s almost entirely wordless. Instead, the player pieces together the life of a young woman through objects unpacked into each room at different stages of her life. The inspiration for that came from a song.