Annapurna’s latest romantic drama is this puzzle game, Maquette

The word that comes to mind when I play Model, the indie-pop puzzle game from developer Graceful Decay, is recursive. It means repetition, a pattern that repeats itself to infinity, like the flowers of broccoli romanesco or the branches of a snowflake. Grammar can be recursive, with a single structure used over and over in a sentence. Thinking can also be recursive – think of the thought itself. In Model, the world itself is recursive, which otherwise transforms simple environments into riddles that repeat eternity.

The story of Model deals with the beginning and end of a relationship between the narrator, Michael and Kenzie. Memories are abstract, so instead of a literal retelling of the couple’s story, we find Michael (years later) through a sketchbook the couple shared once. Their whimsical drawings of castles, coffee and dream homes provide a keyhole image of their time together.

The makiet in question is literally a model version of the world, and it is the building on which the game is centered. The player will return to it time and time again, albeit in three different versions of the space. It’s riddled with puzzles to solve, as Michael reflects on the life of the relationship that began with a meeting at a coffee shop, during that sketchbook.

Puzzles in Model involves moving items between the different scales of recursive worlds. For example, if you pick up a small object like a card in the world with a regular size and throw it in the thumbnail card, it will appear massive in the world with a regular size. It helps to watch the trailer:

Puzzles at the beginning of Model is relatively simple, which defines the rules of the world. A gap appears in a bridge, with no clear way to cross. But a key found earlier on the ground is actually the solution. Once the small key is thrown into the smaller mackerel in the right slot, it can serve as the large missing piece of the bridge in the larger version of the world in which you live. Puzzles range from very easy to shockingly difficult, but they never feel broken or unfair. There are no bad tricks that artificially inflate the difficulty or put out a level; you just need the right perspective and notice small things that can have great meaning in another context.

Perspective makes the difference not only in solving the riddles, but also in the sense of the story. The couple has a familiar, if not dull romance. But even though relationships live and die every day, the loving couple (and then, not in love), the band can feel like everything. In Model, we are in this man’s head, his grand world and vision, alternately romanticized and idealized, constantly on himself.

Model, at best, captures the growth of this man by twisting the story and puzzles together so that the latter can double as metaphors that reinforce the former. It contains themes of simultaneity, between an ordinary romance and the magic of falling in love, a small key that is a massive bridge, and small cracks that create large cracks.

It reminds me of a relationship I had, one I thought I would never see myself in. It is these memories of mine that give Model‘s narrative that emotional weight, even if the writing is clumsy or propped up. Looking back on that relationship, it’s just a stain in my 32 years of life, something that hardly gets a thought. It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when it was so much bigger, where I lived in a fantasy world of my own creation – but I did. And Model have the right beats, and recursions, to evoke that feeling in me, that conflicting sense of scale.

Sometimes I rolled my eyes at Michael’s whining moments, or at the little things the couple fought over. Perhaps these mundane parts of the relationship, how unequal people fall in and out of love, provide a contrast to the fantastic game world – the space that Michael and Kenzie built together and in which they keep themselves. Their relationship breaks down for seemingly small reasons, but in their intimate world, the details get so much bigger.

It’s refreshing to see romance as the beating heart of a video game. Titles like co-games published by Annapurna Florence or Nina Freeman’s We met in May built on the importance of small moments to create emotional weight. Model interrogate the relationship as a whole, and show something the other way around – that there are times when these smaller moments end up as a filler for a relationship that just ends. And that’s OK.

The magical world of Model never disappears, but the relationship fades. And so the world shifts with it, the colorful fantasy turns gray, the makiet shatters and shatters. (At least for Michael.) It’s not necessarily a destroyer; it is something that is clear from the beginning, a tone that makes the whole story shake, even in its happiest moments. The player knows from the beginning that the relationship – no matter how good and perfect it may seem – will end.

Model is now available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Windows PC via Steam. The game was revised using a PS5 code provided by Annapurna Interactive. Vox Media has affiliated partnerships. It does not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information on Polygon’s ethics policy here.