DinoBones: Tidy Up the Museum! Review (PC)

Hang on, I think I’ve seen this one before. No, scratch that — I have seen this one before. The fact that it has been, what, less than a week, and still I have a crystal clear image in my head of Tidy Up History and its interwoven prehistoric cloisters. But maybe that’s a good thing. DinoBones: Tidy Up the Museum wishes for me to do the same thing, and I, quite conveniently equipped with the knowledge, the tools, and a vague idea of the room layout, am perfectly capable of doing just that. In any other case I’d say that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Fortunately for me, this isn’t what you would call a new trick; it’s piecing fossils together to compile an exhibit. Déjà vu, anyone?

While there was a small fraction of fossil-fumbling in Tidy Up History, I suppose it never really tapped into the archeological aspect of the process. Luckily, DinoBones is a little more in sync with its genomes, as is it with the long-winded process of gradually piecing gargantuan dinosaur skeletons together one bone at a time. Though, it is the same basic process: you take a crowbar to a box of old bones, and you slowly connect them to their respective exhibits whilst the museum slowly begins to find its rhythm in the wake of chaos.

DinoBones is a bit like a giant jigsaw, only without the misshapen bits and pieces, and with more fossils and jagged bone fragments. The idea is all rather simple, though: you receive hundreds, if not thousands of individual bones, a vague description of each of the dinosaurs that populate the museum, and a to-do list that requires you to carefully unbox or scavenge the remains from various areas of the museum, and to sort, categorize, and install each piece to the correct exhibit. And if you are wondering if the game houses swathes of upgrades to help push you in the right direction — it doesn’t. See, DinoBones isn’t like your typical Librarian clone; it rejects the usual skill tree and instead chooses to prioritize the “thrill” of the graft. It doesn’t want you to breeze through the usual motions. Really, it wants you to stick around, analyze everything, and ultimately feel good about yourself.

As there are no traditional upgrades for you to unlock in DinoBones, you do have quite a lot of additional legwork here. It’s a blessing and a curse, too. On the one hand, it increases the overall play time and gives you a lot more to think about between sections. But on the other hand, it removes the usual hand-holding that you tend to find in alternate worlds to create a slightly more complex puzzle that is, while rewarding in its own right, rather long-winded. That said, as it categorizes each of its bones into various colors and shapes, it isn’t all that different from your entry-level jigsaw. This spot just happens to have a ton of bones.

As with most games that choose to replicate the ever-fruitful Librarian formula, DinoBones is a game that feeds you small bursts of joy through the process of revealing small portions of your work at a time. As you gradually compile the skulls and vertebrae of each of the nine featured exhibits, the museum opens up its doors to various secrets and small details. Say, if you manage to complete one exhibit, then you effectively receive a reward—a trinket from the past, like a toy airplane, for example. It’s a light touch that doesn’t add a great deal to the overall experience, but it is a welcome one that helps to break down an otherwise predictable pattern, so to speak.

While DinoBones doesn’t exactly bring anything new to the table in terms of mechanics, it does offer some great features, most of which come neatly wrapped in a visually appealing glass-stained setting that’s rife with warm colors and embellishments. And to give credit where it’s due, DinoBones does provide a clean and positively charming world. Even though it is, well, confined to the one open space, it does add a good deal of visual flair and technical polish to its scene. And that’s a huge plus here, as most organizing sims have a rather awful habit of failing to accommodate, or at least attempt to flesh out a floor plan with bits and pieces that you want to see alongside the usual bones, clothes, potions or books. Post Office springs to mind here, not as a prime example of a visually spectacular game, but as one that fosters the absolute basics and little more. Out of the two, you can guess which of them I chose to stick around in till the end.

All in all I’d say that DinoBones makes for a fitting addition to the organizing field. While it chooses to sideline the common components to focus on a more complex and somewhat intimate, UI-free experience, it presents itself as an interesting take on a concept that is, with all due respect to the other fifty or sixty tidying up games that have launched this past week, a tad bloated. It doesn’t rewrite the book, but it does make a commendable effort to service the fledgling paleontologists who would love nothing more than to sit and fumble around with fossils for a few hours.

Verdict

DinoBones: Tidy Up the Museum services both the aspiring paleontologist and the clutter-obsessed fanatic with the gift of fossils, a warm environment, and a UI-free experience that, although lacking in the usual elements of a traditional Librarian-like sim, collectively make for a surprisingly enjoyable graft. It’s the little details that keep it afloat, too—the post-completion “surprises” and the neat touches that complement the setting, for example. Add the fact that it also plays well and is able to hold your attention over the course of its two thousand-piece cycle, and you have a perfectly passable space to sink your teeth into for a handful of hours.