There You Go

Uncover the secrets of household objects in a new puzzle game

In a previous life, There You Go would’ve been a sleeper hit on a flash portal website, where lots of different creators submitted games and animations to test out new ideas, or to show off what they could do. It feels like it has a lot in common with puzzles that were popular back then, halfway between something like the GROW series of games and an escape-the-room puzzle. Now, it’s on itch.io, and it’s the first game from Octogear, the studio name of solo developer Evyatar Amitay.

the spaces are as simple and sparse as they can be

For the most part, There You Go is a cute little game about exploring a set of cube-shaped rooms—about 10—and puzzling your way through them. The solutions require a bit of lateral thinking, but not a ton. It’s only about 10 or 15 minutes of clicking on objects, but definitely more than that if you enjoy, as I did, spinning the rooms with their shifting walls, and the very satisfying clicking sound when you interact with the household appliances.

Even though the spaces are as simple and sparse as they can be, made mostly with voxels, the soft lighting gives the place a homey feeling, and those clicks when you make something important happen feel just right. The game is so tightly put together that almost everything you can click is important, although Amitay points out that there are a few easter eggs—my favorite is the painting that tells you, “I should probably do something.”

There You Go also has an interesting design quirk in the form of randomly generated puzzle solutions, which I only know because I’ve played through more than once. They’re the same key-code puzzles, but the codes are switched up every time, meaning your time with the game is going to be just that little bit different from someone else’s.

You can download There You Go over on itch.io.