Unravel review: Eyes full of candy, head full of yarn
Netflix makes secret “test” films. I discovered this a few years ago through InstantWatcher, which aggregates all films added to Netflix on any given day. Here, for your entertainment, is “Example Show,” presumably used by Netflix to test some aspect of its TV streaming.
For those who can’t watch: It’s nonsense. First, a twenty second time-lapse of a random building. Then a full minute of a bubbling fountain—a medium shot followed by a close-up. A hand reaches in and touches the water. Skipping forward, there are shots of trains going by, a shot of the moon, a man dribbling a soccer ball… you get the idea.
There’s no substance. “Example Show” is ten minutes of stitched-together B-roll—vaguely pleasant, inoffensive, and ultimately empty of meaning.
Much the same could be said of Unravel.
The ties that bind
Sometimes Unravel is cute. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Most of the time it’s a humdrum puzzle-platformer.

You play as Yarny, a knitted doll who decides he’s tired of living in grandma’s boring ol’ house and goes on an adventure. Unfortunately for Yarny, he accidentally snagged his intestines on something on his way out the window. Thus he is constantly hemorrhaging a trail of red thread wherever he goes.
The same dark magic that brought Yarny to life also allows him to replenish his yarn supply at various checkpoints, though. This is the “puzzle” part of this puzzle platformer. You need to make it to the next checkpoint without using an arbitrary amount of thread.
What it actually means: A lot of tedious backtracking. Yarny uses his guts for everything—building bridges, operating pulleys, and (most often) swinging off pegs like Tarzan with a horrific hernia.
Fun fact: A human’s intestines are approximately twenty feet long.

Anyway, many of these actions require Yarny to tie a knot in his slowly-dwindling intestines—say, to push a can over a rock so Yarny can stand on it and reach a higher ledge. Rarely are these “puzzles” at all difficult to figure out.
What is difficult is remaining patient when the game then forces you to go back and untie all those damn knots because otherwise you can’t make it to the checkpoint. Try not to lose your temper when you’re mere centimeters from the next yarn-granting checkpoint and see an emaciated Yarny start pulling at his stomach, wordlessly whining that he can’t go even one more step unless you go back and undo a knot you foolishly left tied, or go over that [random decorative element] instead of underneath it.
And I do mean random. Unravel is broken up into ten stages, each with its own theme. The forest level! The winter level! The…toxic waste level?
Two toxic waste levels, actually. Much of Unravel is concerned with—I think—the effects of time on a family, on aging and loss and (possibly) dementia. None of this is especially well-conveyed, but I’m pretty sure that’s what I gleaned from it by the end.
It’s hard to follow though, given the game has barely any structure to it. Story is conveyed, at best, in winks and nudges. Walking through the forest you might suddenly see a ghostly apparition, a man and woman hiking. Later you might see a kid playing in the sand or something.
Imagine looking through the photo albums (or Instagram, for the young’uns) of a total stranger. Or, better yet, imagine looking through a collection of stock photos and trying to assemble a story from them. That’s Unravel.
And we haven’t even talked about those toxic waste environs yet! I was willing to accept Unravel as a soporific, confused trip through a grandma’s photo album, but midway through the game the story takes a turn and focuses on the dangers of nuclear waste or big business or global warming or…I can’t really fathom it, to be honest. All I know is Yarny needs to avoid the massive puddles of radioactive green goo while ghosts of suited businessmen appear briefly in the background.
The levels themselves are admittedly beautiful to look at. As with The Vanishing of Ethan Carter I suspect photogrammetry might’ve played a hand, leading to a level of ultra-realism rarely seen in games, let alone small indie titles like this. But they’re empty. They play at life, at emotion, at having “something to say” without really saying much at all.
-
Shangul Mangul HabeAngur Shangul Mangul HabeAngur (City of Goats) is a game for child (4-8 years). they learn how be useful in the city and respect to people. Persian n...
-
Resume Full name Sayed Ahmadreza Razian Age 38 (Sep 1982) Website ahmadrezarazian.ir Email ahmadrezarazian@gmail.com Education MS...
-
Drowning Detection by Image Processing In this research, I design an algorithm for image processing of a swimmer in a pool. This algorithm diagnostics the swimmer status. Every time graph s...
-
Tianchi-The Purchase and Redemption Forecasts 2015 Special Prize – Tianchi Golden Competition (2015) “The Purchase and Redemption Forecasts” in Big data (Alibaba Group) Among 4868 teams. Introd...
-
معرفی نام و نام خانوادگی سید احمدرضا رضیان پست الکترونیکی ahmadrezarazian@gmail.com درجات علمی کارشناسی : ریاضی کاربردی – دانشگاه اصفهان (معدل 14...
-
Nokte – نکته نرم افزار کاربردی نکته نسخه 1.0.8 (رایگان) نرم افزار نکته جهت یادداشت برداری سریع در میزکار ویندوز با قابلیت ذخیره سازی خودکار با پنل ساده و کم ح...
-
1st National Conference on Computer Games-Challenges and Opportunities 2016 According to the public relations and information center of the presidency vice presidency for science and technology affairs, the University of Isfah...
-
Tianchi-Brick and Mortar Store Recommendation with Budget Constraints Ranked 5th – Tianchi Competition (2016) “Brick and Mortar Store Recommendation with Budget Constraints” (IJCAI Socinf 2016-New York,USA)(Alibaba Group...
-
Optimizing raytracing algorithm using CUDA Abstract Now, there are many codes to generate images using raytracing algorithm, which can run on CPU or GPU in single or multi-thread methods. In t...
-
2nd Symposium on psychological disorders in children and adolescents 2016 2nd Symposium on psychological disorders in children and adolescents 2016 Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery – University of Isfahan – 2 Aug 2016 - Ass...
-
My City This game is a city simulation in 3d view. Gamer must progress the city and create building for people. This game is simular the Simcity.
-
ببین و بپر به زودی.... لینک صفحه : http://bebinbepar.ir
-
SVM Review On this review, i compare 4 papers about 4 famous models by SVM. These models are : Maximum Likelihood Classification (ML) Backpropagatio...
-
Watching Jumping Coming Soon... Visit at : http://bebinbepar.ir/
-
Environmental Education Software In this game , Kids learn that They must respect to Nature and the Environment. This game was created in 3d . 600x420 (0x0) 66.45 KB ...
- AMD Ryzen Downcore Control AMD Ryzen 7 processors comes with a nice feature: the downcore control. This feature allows to enable / disabl...
- Fallout 4 Patch 1.3 Adds NVIDIA HBAO+ and FleX-Powered Weapon Debris Fallout 4 launched last November to record player numbers, swiftly becoming the most popular third-party game...
- Detecting and Labeling Diseases in Chest X-Rays with Deep Learning Researchers from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland are using NVIDIA GPUs and deep learni...
- NVIDIA TITAN Xp vs TITAN X NVIDIA has more or less silently launched a new high end graphics card around 10 days ago. Here are some pictu...
- Automatic Colorization Automatic Colorization of Grayscale Images Researchers from the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago and University of Chicago developed a fully aut...
- Back to Dinosaur Island Back to Dinosaur Island takes advantage of 15 years of CRYENGINE development to show users the sheer endless p...
- Unity – What’s new in Unity 5.3.3 The Unity 5.3.3 public release brings you a few improvements and a large number of fixes. Read the release not...
- ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 TURBO Review This GTX 1080 TURBO is the simplest GTX 1080 I tested. By simplest, I mean the graphics card comes with a simp...
- Assisting Farmers with Artificial Intelligence With our planet getting warmer and warmer, and carbon dioxide levels steadily creeping up, companies are using...
- کودا – CUDA کودا به انگلیسی (CUDA) که مخفف عبارت انگلیسی Compute Unified Device Architecture است یک سکوی پردازش موازی و مد...
- Virtual Reality in the Military Virtual reality has been adopted by the military – this includes all three services (army, navy and air force)...
- Diablo Meets Dark Souls in Isometric Action-RPG Eitr Among the indie games Sony showcased during its E3 press conference this week, Eitr was what most stood out to...
- Diagnosing Cancer with Deep Learning and GPUs Using GPU-accelerated deep learning, researchers at The Chinese University of Hong Kong pushed the boundaries...
- Head-mounted Displays (HMD) Head-mounted displays or HMDs are probably the most instantly recognizable objects associated with virtual rea...
- How Augmented Reality Will Change Education Completely by Florian Radke (TEDx)Virtual and Augmented Realities can create powerful experiences in Education. …
- Open-Access Visual Search Tool for Satellite ImageryA new project by Carnegie Mellon University researchers provides journalists, …
- Microsoft confirms there will be no Windows 11Microsoft says that Windows 10 will be its final release …
- Windows 10 tips and tricksThe latest version of Microsoft's main operating system is full …
- New GPU Computing Model for Artificial IntelligenceYann LeCun, Director of Facebook AI Research, invited NVIDIA CEO …
- Grab Six Awesome Linux Games for a Few Bucks with Humble Devolver BundleHooray, hooray! Attention, Linux gamers from all over the Interwebs, …
- Nvidia releases driver for MGS5 and Mad MaxHappy Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain day! Or …
- eSports Experiencing Unprecedented GrowthMarch does not just belong to basketball anymore. While much …
- Cleaning Up Radioactive Waste from World War II With SupercomputingThe Handford site in southeastern Washington is the largest radioactive …
- Intel Evo laptopThe Intel® Evo™ platform is inspired and guided by thousands …
Leave a Reply