we came up with the album metaphor early on brier says it changed from album to scrapbook back to album but we wanted the progression to be through these snapshots because it felt like the game is made of snapshots so the metaphor needed to be snapshots of a lifethe photo displayed in that ingame album is taken in the room in which you finish unpacking in another delightful touch the accompanying caption reflects that a design principle i really like is the idea of whatever the player chooses to do were going to acknowledge that like were not going to suggest its weird that they did that dawson says or ignore it and feel like you made an invalid choice brier adds that meant simply rolling with it if the player happened to choose to finish in the smallest bathroom in other words maybe theyre just really excited to have a second toilet brier says its just like bonus toilet thats the line there as gratifying a way to close out each move as this is better still are the exportable gifs that mimic the one that first brought unpacking so much attention showing a spedup replay of how you made a room your own in the details image credit witch beamyet this was only implemented after a suggestion from witch beam cofounder sanatana mishra we were like yeah thats a pretty good idea but it was actually horribly complicated brier laughs it was a constant source of bugs right up until release dawson adds though given the result has allowed creative players to imagine their own little micronarratives one enterprising individual made an animation of a softtoy football match he admits the constant testing was worth itthis did however introduce one 11thhour headache as brier realised one drawback to the games unobtrusive interface people are going to miss this she insisted we need to tutorialise it in some small way and tim was like we are literally days from release what are you doing wren her persistence paid off when you finish a level the replay button will flash until the player clicks it thats the whole tutorialisation but when i see in peoples streams that it catches their eye im so happy that we put that inif this feels like the gamedev equivalent of realising youve forgotten something during a move when you find yourself stuffing an item into an alreadygroaning box at the last minute thats something else witch beam has thought of sometimes you will find an object that has clearly been belatedly shoved wherever it fits even if that means an incongruous discovery upon unpacking its one more story element that some players might miss but brier says that doesnt matter too muchyou wont have quite as deep an experience as someone whos being careful and paying a lot of attention but your progression isnt blocked except that is for a couple of moments theres the aforementioned diploma of course