Coldwood Interactive’s Unravel brings back whimsy and charm with puzzle platforming

In the swap of AAA titles that appeared at E3 this year, it was inevitable some gems would fall through the cracks as far as attention goes. One such game is Coldwood Interactive’s new puzzle platformer, Unravel. Featuring Yarny, the game uses physics to explore the whimsical world and the character can unwind himself to help him surmount the obstacles that are encountered.

The game has a quality that can easily remind you of The Secret of N.I.M.H. and all the inherent charm something like that would entail. Marking Coldwood’s entry into current-gen, the team behind Freak Out has some ambitious plans for the game, “Of course, the transition for us has been more about working on a completely different style of game, but the technology side is interesting too…We like puzzles that become part of the story, things that you can easily tell someone about – like the part where you need to drag a lantern through deep snow, staying close to the light so you don’t freeze to death, or the part where you make your way along a rocky seashore, trying not to get washed away by the waves that keep rolling in,” Unravel’s creative director, Martin Sahlin explained.

The tiny developer was also behind lukewarm The Fight: Lights Out, “It wasn’t a great game, although it had some good parts, it turned out very different from what we set out to make.It still sold hundreds of thousands of copies though, and a lot of people really really liked it. That made me think. If something that’s essentially a failure can reach that many people, and have such an impact on them, imagine how many people you could reach with a truly good game, a game that actually tried to do something more than to just entertain you. I guess Unravel was born out of that insight,” Sahlin continued.

The direction the Swedish group is taking this looks fantastic and has all the charm of games like Media Molecule’s Little Big Planet or Sony’s LocoRoco, while offering up its own personality.

Unravel will debut on PS4 and XB1, though a release window has yet to be set.