Sizeable Review (Xbox Series X|S & PlayStation 5)

From the outside looking in, Business Goose Studios’ Sizeable looks small enough to fit in your back pocket. Touch a button, however, and that pint-sized diorama soon becomes a scalable world of possibilities—a place where eagle-eyed spectators can source creative ways to crop, inflate, and expand each and every nook and cranny. Pinch it, and an umbrella might just expand. Tap it, and a beach ball might double in size. Stretch it, and the sun might shine a little brighter, allowing the icy clusters from a bitter cold crater to melt. The point is, Sizeable might appear peculiarly small, but if you spend enough time pinching its borders, you might just find that it has a much, much bigger heart.

With four corners of a vibrant diorama and a plethora of objects of all shapes and sizes, the objective seems almost too easy—to inflate certain aspects of the world and to manipulate the terrain to achieve the desired effect of a particular environmental change. To some extent, that’s all that Sizeable is: a pocket-sized puzzle game that primarily consists of cropping items and experimenting with various aspects to create a unique climax. For example, in one episode you have a snowy diorama, a beaming sunrise, and an undergrowth. By tapping the sun, you can shed light on the surface, and then remove a layer from the diorama to unlock a new section of the puzzle.

Sizeable is all about finding those precious lightbulb moments. In one minute, you could be activating a catapult and pinging a bouncy ball through a market-inspired diorama. In another, you could be scaling a series of canopies and using them as launch pads for that same ball. At times, you might encounter a ripple effect—a chain of events that allow a small object to pass through the world and shed light on a second section of the puzzle. As the weaver of objects and the marionette of each piece of the jigsaw, it simply falls to you to figure out which objects need to be scaled, and how each of them will influence the other pieces on the board.

In the two hours that you spend with the dioramas in this beautiful archipelago, the objective doesn’t really change its course. Typically, you have three pillars to unearth, and an occasional tortoise to dig out—an act that often rewards you with bonus content. But, for the most part, the process is transparent: to use your mouse wheel to scale objects, and to experiment with various set pieces to create a rolling effect. If, say, you increase the size of a cloud, then you can create wind. Likewise, if you bring the moon down to the horizon, you can manipulate the tide, and so on and so forth.

Suffice it to say, there’s an adorable game here that knows what it is and what it brings to the front page. Without trying to inflate its own ego, it presents a simple, wholesome, and elegantly crafted collection of palm-sized puzzles, each of which flaunt their own themes, characteristics, and creative ideas. Of course, it may lack the padded elements and a fully bloated campaign, though it does find numerous ways to cram as much into its gameplay as possible. And I think that’s something that Sizeable excels in: its ability to pack a lot of heart into a relatively short experience.

With intuitive controls and a non-invasive interface, Business Goose Studios’ love letter to the moldable diorama comes across as an incredibly easy game to slip into and enjoy in a single sitting. With puzzles that are creatively complex yet mechanically simple to solve, there isn’t a lot here that requires you to think outside of the box. On occasion, a puzzle may require you to fool around with various components before that all-important a-ha moment occurs. But, for the most part, the cogs align in a natural way, meaning, you rarely have to concern yourself with the details whilst the world does its own thing on the side.

It’s easy to slot Sizeable into the same category as the likes of The Gardens Between, Hidden Lands, and Monument Valley. Given that the entire premise is based around diorama manipulation and gentle three-dimensional analysis, you do have a fairly familiar idea here that fits snugly into that ever-popular field. While it isn’t mechanically superior, it is a delightful experience that waxes the best of beginner-friendly puzzle-solving with a charming atmosphere of piano-based cues and adorable visual effects. Sometimes, that’s all that you need from a game like this: an easy way to blow off steam and unwind from the hustle and bustle of the world. On that front, Sizeable bottles a perfectly sized, well balanced concoction.

Above all, Business Goose Studios proves a point that you don’t need a grand-scale open-world environment to make a lasting impression. As simple and as easy as it often seems, it shows that you can do a lot with the bare minimum. In this case, a handful of dioramas and an easy-to-navigate scaling tool combine to make a perfectly serviceable jigsaw. Frankly, you don’t need any more than that.

Verdict

Sizeable adds a touch of scalable functionality to a palm-sized anthology of elegantly crafted dioramas, with a host of oh-so-wholesome elements and an impressive variety of themes and puzzles to keep the avid weaver of set pieces engaged for hours. While still short and without the full weight of a grand-scale campaign, the game itself offers a brilliant selection of stages, a good mixture of creatively crafted challenges, and just enough collectibles to make the process feel worth your time and effort.

It goes without saying at this point, but if you happen to have two hours to spare and a bit of change to part ways with, then you should definitely consider taking a chance on Sizeable. It’s cute, creative, and, if we’re being overly generous, probably one of the coziest and most well-crafted diorama-based puzzle games on the market. Need we say more?