Sizeable from Alchemy Games and Business Goose Studio is a chill and cozy puzzle game on PlayStation. With its simple low-poly dioramas and relaxing presentation, it offers a laid-back experience built around one very unusual mechanic. Check it out in our Sizeable review!
Sizeable is a relaxing and peaceful puzzle/exploration game where you shrink and grow your way through handcrafted dioramas in search of hidden objects.
Making Mountains Out of Molehills
The premise behind Sizeable from Alchemy Games and Business Goose Studio is simple: you can increase or decrease the size of objects throughout each diorama that you explore by pressing the L1 or R1 buttons. The trick is figuring out how changing one object can affect everything around it.
Your main objective is to find three totems hidden in each level and place them in their corresponding locations. The game doesn’t simply point you toward the solution, though. Instead, hints displayed in the upper-left corner indicate the general objects you need to interact with. Once you identify those objects, you at least have an idea of where to start, but you’ll still need to figure out exactly what to do with them.
This can make some of the earlier puzzles feel rather cryptic. There were several occasions where I knew which objects I was supposed to interact with, but not what the game expected me to do with them. As a result, trial and error can sometimes play a bigger role than thoughtful puzzle solving.
Thankfully, Sizeable does a good job of keeping things interesting as you progress. While the core mechanic remains the same throughout, the results of resizing objects can be surprisingly unpredictable. Changing the size of one element can trigger an unexpected reaction elsewhere in the diorama, which encourages experimentation and keeps the puzzles from feeling like simple variations of the same challenge.
Once you understand how Sizeable wants you to approach its puzzles, the experience becomes much more enjoyable. You start looking at each little scene differently, experimenting with the objects around you and gradually figuring out how everything fits together.
The controls themselves work well during gameplay, since, as mentioned before, using the L1 and R1 buttons makes it very easy to resize objects as needed. Rotating the dioramas also makes it simpler to inspect the environment and spot things that may be hidden from view. The menus are a different story. They use a mouse-style cursor instead of straightforward directional navigation, and moving that cursor around is noticeably slow. Thankfully, this is limited to the menus and doesn’t affect the actual puzzle-solving experience.
A World in Miniature
Sizeable features 39 handcrafted low-poly dioramas spread across four seasonal environments. The simple visual style works particularly well for the game’s relaxed atmosphere, with each little scene feeling like its own miniature puzzle box.
The soothing soundtrack also fits the experience nicely. Sizeable isn’t trying to overwhelm you with elaborate visuals or an intense presentation. Instead, everything works together to create a calm environment where you can take your time and experiment with the different elements in each scene. And, yes, there are also 39 hidden turtles to find, with one tucked away in each level! Finding them all gives you another reason to carefully inspect each diorama instead of simply stopping once you’ve found the three poles.
The trophy list also encourages you to look beyond simply completing the main levels. The list includes 4 Bronze trophies, 2 Silver trophies, and 10 Gold trophies. Trophies are awarded for discovering hidden levels, completing them, and finding all of the game’s turtles, so earning the Platinum will require some additional exploration and experimentation rather than simply playing through the game from beginning to end. If you need some extra help, you can check out this Sizeable Trophy Guide.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2430442028
Final Thoughts
Sizeable is initially a rather cryptic puzzle game. The hints give you a general direction, but figuring out exactly how everything interacts can involve quite a bit of trial and error. As you progress, however, you start to understand the game’s approach, and experimenting with each diorama becomes much more satisfying.
The fact that the same simple resizing mechanic can produce such different and sometimes unexpected results also keeps the experience fresh. Even though the underlying idea doesn’t change, the situations built around it do. If you’re looking for a relaxing puzzle game and don’t mind experimenting, Sizeable is easy to recommend. Just don’t expect every solution to reveal itself through pure logic. Sometimes, you’ll need to try something, see what happens, and work your way toward the answer. Sizeable is out on PlayStation 5 with a budget price of $6.99.
Disclaimer
This Sizeable review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Business Goose Studio.
