Some games do everything they can to ratchet up the anxiety. They drop you in a doomsday scenario, send you out on the battlefield, or pit you against towering monstrosities that can slay you in one hit. Is This Seat Taken? taps into something more stressful than all of those experiences combined: trying to figure out where to sit on a crowded bus.
Released during last week’s Nintendo Indie Showcase, Poti Poti Studio’s debut is a clever puzzle game that’s all about navigating the complexity of a specific social calculus. It’s a game built for anyone who has ever had to make a wedding seating chart or organize a classroom full of rowdy kids. It discovers the tricky puzzles hidden in everyday life, leaving you to wonder if all those big action games are trying a bit too hard to engineer a tension that’s present in life’s most mundane moments.
In each level, Is This Seat Taken? tasks you with making different seating arrangements. For instance, one of its earliest levels presents you with an empty bus. There’s a gaggle of geometric passengers (squares and rhombuses with cute little faces) waiting to be dragged and dropped into a seat. Each one of them is particular, though. One may request a window seat, while another may wish to sit alone. That’s where the anxiety sets in.
The challenge is in balancing the conflicting needs of competing personalities. You may wind up in a scenario where one person wants to listen to loud music on the bus, but someone else wants to read a book in peace. They need to be separated, but what happens if that book reader hasn’t showered today? That means you’ll need to keep them away from someone with a sensitive nose. A simple task turns into a complex juggling act as you work towards a solution that satisfies everyone’s needs.
Poti Poti Studio finds several everyday scenarios that put that puzzle hook to good use. Organizing a busy airport terminal, separating the dancers from sitters at a club, figuring out an open office desk plan – all of these situations turn familiar social conundrums into comedic puzzle setups that only get more complicated over time. And while the game can’t quite invent enough scenes to fill out its five-hour runtime without double-dipping, the act of dragging shapes to seats is satisfying enough to keep the logic puzzles engaging to the end.
It’s such an ingenious idea that I’m surprised I’ve never played a game quite like it before. It perfectly captures the feeling of walking onto a crowded bus and trying to quickly figure out where to sit. That person seems weird, that one has a tupperware of something concealed, that person seems nice. Do I take the best seat I can get early or walk further in hopes that I come across an open two-seater? It’s a risk that may leave you sitting next to the worst person on the bus, but it will pay off if it means getting to sit alone and doze off against the window.
Why can’t a video game be about that instead of shooting enemy soldiers in an explosive warzone? Is This Seat Taken? proves that even the most boring parts of our lives can make for a great video game.
