Creating seating arrangements can be pretty stressful; the empath part of me strives to find the perfect seat for every person even if it’s a nearly impossible task. If it’s for a big, meaningful event, I get even more anxious. When you find the right place for everyone, though, it’s even more satisfying than a great jigsaw puzzle. Chasing that feeling is what Is This Seat Taken? is all about — and it does so in a low-stakes and relaxing way.
In Is This Seat Taken?, your goal is to place people who are tiny geometric shapes into the right seat that meets their needs. In a bus stage, for example, a triangle character may want to sit near a window and not near somebody who smells. When you place that triangle by the window, they’ll be happy. But drop a smelly square nearby and the triangle will get mad until you find them a better spot or move the square somewhere else. With limited seats and various needs to take into account, the stages can quickly become pretty tricky.
Fortunately, the game does a lot to make sure there isn’t too much pressure involved. There’s no timer, so you can take as long as you want to try and find everyone their seat. The shapes are quite charming, which helps me from getting too annoyed with them even if they’re particularly difficult to seat. And if you don’t find a way to make everybody happy, the only “penalty” is that you won’t get enough points to get the gold stars used to unlock secret levels.
In addition to the per-level puzzles, you’ll also follow the story of Nat the rhombus as she pursues her dreams of becoming an actor. It’s a light, breezy story that gives the game an excuse to take you to different locales and cities. But I had more fun pondering the backstories for the many other characters you have to seat. What movie are a parent and child seeing at a movie theater? Why did a square in line at the airport forget to shower? Why does one character have a crush on another? I liked trying to fill in the blanks about what they were all doing, especially when I needed something else to think about when I was stuck.
By the time I finished the main levels in Is This Seat Taken? — my playthrough was about six hours — I was ready to be done. You’ll make repeat visits to the same types of areas, so some of the novelty started to wear off. And I’ll admit that sometimes I wished I could just tell the characters that they should deal with sitting next to somebody playing music on the bus. But now that I’m done, I’m already starting to miss my cute shape friends. Sometimes we all just want a place to sit, and I’m glad I could give them some help.
Is This Seat Taken? is now available on PC, Nintendo Switch, and mobile.
