Apartment Story review

Apartment Story is one of those short games that does enough to keep you playing and provides an interesting story that doesn’t outstay its welcome. For one, you’re stuck in the confines of your own apartment with a selection of mundane chores and actions to take part in. Secondly, the day and night cycle sees you wasting time trying to fill the hours until the next story beat. It’s also a worrying reflection of my own life, but that’s another story and better told to my therapist. On that note, let’s get into what makes Blue Rider Interactive’s debut worth playing.

While chilling in your apartment, you’re interrupted by Diane, a woman who used to live with you who’s being stalked by someone. She isn’t quite honest with you at first, telling you she’s living in her car, not quite highlighting the severity of her situation. You keep her company, listen to music, and chat, but she goes and leaves you to go about your day. After another encounter, you find she’s being stalked by a very dangerous man and he soon starts to become a part of your own daily life.

While in the apartment, you have to manage certain gauges that keep your ‘life’ bar from depleting, such as hunger, sleep, mind, toilet, and hygiene. You can make a sandwich or drink a beer in the kitchen, go to bed, read a book or watch tv, go for a pee, and take a shower to keep these gauges full. As the story unfolds, trying to fit in these tasks is important to keeping Arthur alive, but I never struggled to do so, therefore I’m not sure if he actually does die.

Filling your time in Apartment Story by watching porn and engaging in the five-knuckle shuffle, or smoking weed, listening to the stellar soundtrack via a docked music player, or washing up are further activities for you to partake in, and rarely was I waiting around for something to happen. When it does start to pick up with regards to the stalker breaking into your house, that’s when your interest really peaks. Diane tells you about him after some sexy times and a smoke, and you both end up agreeing to get a gun to take care of him.

I won’t ruin the rest of the story, but there are different ways to take care of the situation. It’s a simple premise, yet planning your time and tasks around the text messages you get from Diane telling you when she’ll be round never became boring thanks to the short length of the game. At one point, I was able to fill my time by tidying up my apartment, putting DVDs and books back into boxes, and cleaning up the kitchen, which was satisfying to say the least.

There’s not much more to say without ruining it, but I enjoyed Apartment Story. The PS2-era visuals make it more possible to fill the game with detail, albeit slightly blurred, and the different tasks gave me plenty to do while defending my home from a psycho. If you’re after something a little different that can be completed in one sitting, You should definitely give it a go. Just be prepared to see some sad similarities if you’re anything like me (which hopefully you’re not!). Happy living playing.