Apartment Story review: A granular life turned upside down

The first thing that most players will do in Apartment Story is masturbate. There’s an option to sit down at your laptop and give in to carnal desires. Why do I start out talking about this character, Arthur, pleasuring himself? Because Apartment Story is a game where you’re essentially a puppet master. It’s almost Sims-esque, because you’ll control Arthur with a granular level of detail.

You can take him to the shower, carry food from the fridge to the stove and cook a meal, dance to a track from his iPod, or spark up a joint and sit back on the sofa, with each tap of the button taking a hit as the saturation of the visuals gets brighter and brighter. However, this isn’t a Sims game. It’s not a happy little simulation.

Arthur is trying to live his life. He’s lost his job, has no money - as his mobile phone informs us - and his life seems to have little meaning beyond the aforementioned getting high and masturbating. His roommate, Godot, is out of town, and when Diane arrives at Arthur’s door to pick up something from Godot’s bedroom everything goes to hell.

One thing leads to Diane staying for a beer, the next we’re breaking down Godot’s door to find a gun because Diane has a stalker. More beer is consumed, Diane and Arthur reminisce about why he never made a move on her, and they end up having sex, fully rendered PS2/GTA Hot Coffee style.

The game says a lot without having to use many words. We know what this life looks like because we’ve seen it so many times. There are stacks of DVDs in the living room, the fridge is full of beer and the basic staples of cheap meals. Arthur appears to be a wannabe writer as, if you’re not watching porn on the laptop, you can spend time writing.

Blue Rider Interactive

Everything revolves around wanting a simple life - the furniture is pointed at the TV because, away from this tense story that develops, Arthur likely spends all his time watching it. You can sit him down and watch away until your heart’s content. Or Arthur’s heart, because you do have to keep an eye on how he’s doing. If his life meter slips too low he’ll die and the game starts all over again.

Standing under the shower for minutes at a time fills the meter, as does cobbling together a meal that would impress an art student. If you want to, you can simply sit at the window smoking as many cigarettes as possible while the iPod shuffles through songs. But, there is a story flowing between these snatches of life.

This is where I admit that Apartment Story is one of the creepiest games I’ve played this year, not because it’s a horror. It isn’t. But because this is a man going about his business when his world is tipped upside down. After the first meeting with Diane she went home, I picked up the beer cans and pizza box to drop them in the trash. The discarded joint was finished off and I sent Arthur to bed.

Waking the next day - the game is semi-real time - a man was sitting in the living room, all of Arthur’s belongings strewn across the floor. This is the nightmare of many, an intruder in your personal space, someone who means you harm. The figure sat casually at the table, with the air of a gangster about to break some legs, instantly caught me off-guard. Putting down my Steam Deck I glanced at my front door, it was still locked, and I noticed I was on edge.

This fleeting moment caused more anxiety in me than any Resident Evil or Silent Hill ever has, because we all, to some extent live like Arthur, just passing time between seeing friends, watching TV, and making food. After the tension passed I’m not ashamed to say Arthur lit a cigarette and smoked it in the shower while a sad song played in another room.

Apartment Story is billed as being ‘feature-length’ and it is. My first playthrough took around two hours, a second was nearer to 90 minutes. There’s no reason to rush anything, except towards the end of the story when things really kick off. It’s a one-room thriller that moves with a glacial pace, and I’m not using that word in a derogatory sense. Oddly, in tone, it reminded me of a Danny Boyle film, like Trainspotting, or similar. This slow pacing connects you to Arthur in ways that you could never connect to a Sim.

I fear that saying any more would utterly spoil what is a tremendous piece of storytelling that could only be achieved via interactive media. Sure, you can tell this story via film, but I’m not sure I would have been as unsettled, nor would I have cared so deeply for Arthur. Apartment Story won’t be to everyone’s tastes, with retro graphics, little action, and minimal dialogue, this is auteur game creation that works because it’s so simple and devoid of any pretentions.

Pros: Delightful details, intriguing story-telling, utterly thrilling

Cons: Graphics and pacing might put off some players

For fans of: L.A. Noire, The Sims, Trainspotting

8/10: Excellent

Apartment Story is available now for PC (version tested). A review code was provided by the publisher. Read a guide to our review scores here.