Diorama Builder Review
A relaxing indie with soothing vibes!
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Title: Diorama Builder
Release: June 21, 2024
Platform: PC
Developer: Virtual Arts Studio
Publisher: Pixel Path
Genre: Puzzle Indie
ESRB: N/A
Reviewed on: PC
Time Played: 6 Hours
Intro:
Diorama Builder is a cozy indie game giving you dioramas to put together in a comfortable environment with great music to match the mood of whatever diorama you’re putting together. Please, stick around and allow me to let you know the basics of the game before giving you my final thoughts and rating the game for my shelves.
Where it starts
The game starts by placing you in an office equipped with shelves for your dioramas, a table in the middle to put them, and a computer to look at the available puzzles and options. There were also some interactive posters, when you click on them, they will take you to some other games the developer has worked on.
Can the kids watch
Diorama Builder was a very chill and entertaining game. You will find no poor language or extreme graphics to worry about if you’re considering playing with the kids. I streamed the game alone for a few hours but after the stream I brought my kids in, and we had a blast figuring out what goes where and exploring the diorama as it was built.
The Dioramas
The base game provided six dioramas to piece together, with a few more available as DLC options. The DLC dioramas contain about three times as many pieces as the base dioramas, requiring a lot of time to put together, but also make a much larger diorama.
Figuring out the puzzle
After you decide what diorama you want to put together you will be placed at the table with all the pieces available on the right side of the screen. There you will also find a few options like how much of the diorama you want visible and what color to make the shadow pieces. There was some guidance, showing you a shadow of what piece belongs where, and you would comb through the pieces left to find a match and drag into place. The game was designed so as not to trap any shadows underneath placed pieces, forcing you to building from the bottom up.
Interacting for good fun
After you manage to piece everything together you will have the option to play with the diorama. You could change the lighting from night to day, watching all the lights you placed turn on or off. You could also interact with a lot of different pieces like opening doors or chopping wood. Every diorama had at least one special interaction rewarding the player with an achievement.
Outro:
I have never built or played with a diorama in real life, unless you consider Legos a form of diorama, but these dioramas are quite a bit different compared to Legos. I was very surprised at how enjoyable this game turned out. On the outside it may not look like much, just matching pieces to their shadow until the puzzle was done. But it didn’t seem much different then looking at a picture of a puzzle being put together. The music selected for every diorama was very fitting for the scene and not so hard as to be distracting, just right to put me in the right space to work out the puzzles.
The visuals of the game were great, some pieces may have looked a little confusing by themselves but as they were assembled and came together, I could definitely tell what I was looking at. And every diorama was quite impressive after they were completed and I could move through the finished product exploring all of the work. I’m handing out a 4.
I usually rate games on story about here, but there is absolutely no story at all, so I decided to substitute that rating with the complexity of the puzzles. Putting a diorama together isn’t going to fry your brain by any means. They felt like the perfect amount of difficulty to relax and put together. Getting to see where every piece goes and testing what was available just killed some time in comfy way. And there were achievements after completing every section, adding to the enjoyment of the entire situation. I’m giving complexity a 2.
Gameplay worked good for what I was trying to accomplish. I only had a few annoyances like trying to move the camera the way I wanted and ending up in the opposite direction or unable to get any closer without fine maneuvering, and there were some cases where I couldn’t place a block because the camera was technically next to a completed section so it wasn’t registering me placing a piece where I could see it. It’s getting a 3.
This game doesn’t offer a whole lot of replayability. I really enjoyed putting together the dioramas, but the only reason I would want to do it again would be if I forgot everything about the game and wanted to go through it all again. They do offer extra Dioramas for purchase, but that’s not really replaying so much as new experiences in the game. I’m giving it a 1.
I had a surprising amount of fun with this game. The time really flew by while I was playing, the only issue might be how few dioramas are available with the base game, I finished those six after about three hours of gameplay, I did enjoy the game enough to purchase one of the DLC dioramas, it was about three times the size of what I had been playing with, taking over an hour to accomplish. It was great, I’m giving it another 4.
Earning Diorama Builder an average score of 2.8 out of 5. Placing it on the Mid Shelf. It was a very well done indie game, with more dioramas being created and put on the market as I make this review. Considering the price I would totally recommend giving this game a shot, you may even like it enough to purchase the various DLCs for more hours of enjoyment.