Under The Warehouse is a mystery puzzle game developed and published by GoolWorks. It focuses on an unnamed character who randomly receives a phone call from a mysterious stranger in need of help. He requires the player to go into The Warehouse, where he asks us to find an egg. Once we get into The Warehouse, we are required to complete puzzles to get further into the place, with some that are easier, and some more difficult than others.

The gameplay for Under The Warehouse reminds me of some small indie games; interesting concepts but difficult to really get into. The puzzles have a mix of difficulties, and if you’re not paying attention to the area around you, you might just miss out on finding the item that will allow you to go forward in the game.

There isn’t really a tutorial, so when you do start playing, you need to figure out which buttons do what. For Xbox Users, “A” allows you to interact with the people working in The Warehouse, and left and right bumpers allow you to open and close your inventory. It took me a couple of moments to figure that out.

When I went into the inventory, I didn’t know how to close it, so I paused the game, and after I had unpaused, the inventory screen had gone away. There isn’t much of a story – you need to find the egg, but other than that, there isn’t much. It’s mostly a puzzle and exploration game, which can be enjoyable if you’re into that kind of thing.

Games don’t always need to have a massive story that leads somewhere at the end, but surprisingly, there are multiple endings for Under The Warehouse. It is easy to get lost or confused about what you’re required to do, as there isn’t any sort of tutorial or hints throughout gameplay, so if you don’t know what to do, or even where to go, you might be stuck for the next hour.

As stated above, the controls are a bit quirky when first loading into the game. It doesn’t take very long to get a feeling for them, but if you are having issues with them, and unfortunately, there isn’t a way to map them to your preferences. Once you do learn the controls, you’ll easily remember them, even if you’re constantly confused by some of the puzzles that you’re required to do.

The graphics are decent for what the game developers are wanting to do with Under The Warehouse. For some people, it could very well be difficult getting into the game due to the graphics being pixel-art-based and not HD Graphics. Even though the graphics aren’t in HD, they fit the theme that the game seems to be going for; a mysterious puzzle-exploration type of game.

The Audio, on the other hand, doesn’t fit very well with the game. It’s just the same type of music over and over again, and there is no way to mute the music. To mute the music, you have to mute the entire game, or you can just deal with it. It can get annoying listening to the same music over again, and there aren’t any other sounds. No footsteps, background noise, or anything along those lines, which is quite a disappointment.

Under The Warehouse can be an interesting and enjoyable game for those puzzle lovers, but it’s also difficult to play due to not having any tutorials or even hints to push us in the right direction. Even if the graphics are pixelated, whoever enjoys puzzle games could easily play the game for hours – It might be best to mute the audio if you tend to get annoyed easily at repetitive music.

Written by: Mitchell Batchelor