A Little to the Left: Seeing Stars review

In recent months when friends have been looking for a laid back puzzle game to play after a stressful day, my current recommendation is without fail A Little to the Left. I just love the intriguing little puzzles it presents you with, and the fact that most of them can be solved in multiple ways is really clever. I must admit though whenever I talk about the game I get a little sad that I’ve already experienced all of its charming puzzles, so when I heard about the upcoming second DLC A Little to the Left: Seeing Stars, nothing was going to stop me from reinstalling this laid back puzzle title.

Seeing Stars adds a hundred new puzzles to the game, and honestly that’s pretty much all there is to it. There isn’t a specific theme or mechanic that makes them new special DLC puzzles, there’s just a big bundle of more of them to play through. As someone who loved the core game though that’s definitely not a complaint, so if you’re in a similar position then Seeing Stars is made for you.

As with the main game, the absolute best “puzzles” of A Little to the Left: Seeing Stars are the ones that give you a big screen of items that need sorting into a drawer or box. There’s something so incredibly satisfying about carefully placing various bits of video recording equipment into a segmented drawer, or origami animals on a display mat so they neatly fit in an ordered and visually satisfying manner, and whether you’re using a mouse, touch screen, or analogue stick to do so it’s a great way to unwind.

Other puzzles might involve finding ways to place food containers in an aesthetically pleasing manner, or stack cups so the patterns on them line up to create a lovely overall image. Doing this in the DLC levels is just as fun as it was the first time around, and figuring out the different ways you can solve each of these problems always feels great.

There is one new feature in A Little to the Left: Seeing Stars: puzzles with five solutions instead of just three. These could be as easy as arranging five off-brand Tamagotchis by their size, or be something much trickier to pick up on like counting the numbers of tiny divots on the end of a set of forks to sort them that way. This might not sound particularly thrilling when you’re reading about it, but in practice it can be pretty enthralling and is just so clever.

It would probably get pretty frustrating if you couldn’t find a solution to a puzzle in A Little to the Left and were just left banging your head against a wall, but the clever hint system prevents that. Hints are hand drawn images that picture the entire solution of a puzzle, but have been scribbled over so you can’t see them. By taking an eraser and rubbing it on the image you can reveal the answer to your problem, but because of the freedom of doing this yourself you can decide to reveal everything or just get a little peek into the solution depending on how much you want to know. You’re also welcome to just skip levels if you want. There’s no shame in A Little to the Left: Seeing Stars, only cosy puzzling joy.

If you wanted more of A Little to the Left and the idea of a hundred extra puzzles excites you, then Seeing Stars is the easiest purchase you’ll make this year. It doesn’t do anything revolutionary to shake up the formula of this cosy puzzle game, but provides a whole lot more sorting and arranging for those looking for it.