Open Roads
Open Roads
Game
Game2021
Maquette
Developer Graceful Decay
Maquette is a puzzle-adventure video game developed by Graceful Decay and published by Annapurna Interactive. The game takes place in a recursive world where every action on a table is recreated in the larger area outside. The game was released in March 2021 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Windows, with a version for Nintendo Switch as well as Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S launching in May and July 2023,… From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
266 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Lemmy, Mastodon) · newest Oct 28, 2026 · last updated Oct 29, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
66
Fresh
127 positive · 66 negative
95% range 59–72%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 127 | 66 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 16 | 9 | 39 |
| Lemmy * | 2 | 0 | 5 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 2 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Mixed
277 of 421 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
65% recommend · 127 yes, 67 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 194 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Mostly Positive (474 of 676 positive).
Players praise the creative recursive puzzle mechanic and beautiful art style. [1][2][3] Many reviewers criticize the clunky controls and technical issues like crashes. [4][5][6] Opinions on the story are mixed, with some finding it moving and others bland. [7][8][9]
Liked
Representative posts
- [5]
WARNING, GAME IS UNBEATABLE! Devs have known for over a year! https://steamcommunity.com/app/762840/discussions/1/3395163747105115975/ In the last area, picking up the only thing there is to pick up, crashes the game. If it doesn't crash, the timed switch in the map does not open its door or even start the timer. The game currently is impossible to complete. Otherwise, the first bit is fun, then it gets obscure & …
- [8]
Overall: 4/10, mostly from the milquetoast story and the frequent yanking of the controls for lame slow pan cutscenes. First of all, wonderful concept. Shame that the story is so bland. Like chicken seasoned with water. The perspective of the storytelling feels like the standard fare of sad guy who has a bunch of red flag behavior and eventually has his relationship deteriorate for... people growing apart? Frankly, …
- [1]
Maquette falls into that increasingly-common category of games with a creative puzzle mechanic that's tied together by a story with a heavy theme. (See also: Monocage, Braid, It Takes Two, RiME, The Unfinished Swan, Superliminal, A Fisherman's Tale, Gorogoa, et cetera.) I found the story parts difficult to listen to, but not because they're bad in any sense: they're well-written and voiced, and mesh with the puzzles …
- [15]
I want to pre-face my review with an important disclaimer: This game is not the most stable. I played this game years ago on Xbox and couldn’t finish it due to a game-breaking bug on the last chapter. Those bugs persist on the PC version. The discussions are full of people who can’t finish this game because this issue still hasn’t been addressed. This time around I was able to finish the game, but be warned that you …
- [2]
This game truly is a Masterpiece. Exceedingly beautiful Art-Style and amazingly unique Puzzles throughout the entire game, all underlined by a very lovely Story.
Summarised from 34 of the 256 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 13, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
Maquette sits at 66% positive across 193 opinionated reactions from 4 sources. Fresh or rotten — where do you land?
Critics, per Wikipedia
Maquette received mostly positive reviews from critics, who praised its world, but criticized its simplistic puzzles and story. It received "mixed or average reviews" according to review aggregator, Metacritic. Eurogamer praised the recursive world of Maquette, writing, "Solving these puzzles is, mostly, a delight. The brilliance of that basic principle lingers... there's more emphasis on step-by-step logic here, and less on tricks of perception. It's cleverly twisted and re-presented in slightly different forms". Rock Paper Shotgun enjoyed the game's puzzle mechanics, but disliked the story of the game, feeling that it was filled with tropes and poor writing. "Everything is so idyllic, and…
From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.
Reactions
60 of 266 · most liked firstUncanyon is the next game from the developers of Maquette First details on the reality-bending puzzler: play.st/4djKBGa
neutral · AI labelView post →Game Pass titles leaving in 2 weeks: -Anuchard -Darkest Dungeon -Broforce -Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem -Maquette -Death's Door
neutral · AI labelView post →WARNING, GAME IS UNBEATABLE! Devs have known for over a year! https://steamcommunity.com/app/762840/discussions/1/3395163747105115975/ In the last area, picking up the only thing there is to pick up, crashes the game. If it doesn't crash, the timed switch in the map does not open its door or even start the timer. The game currently is impossible to complete. Otherwise, the first bit is fun, then it gets obscure & misleading, then there's a forced altercation between the 2 characters in the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Overall: 4/10, mostly from the milquetoast story and the frequent yanking of the controls for lame slow pan cutscenes. First of all, wonderful concept. Shame that the story is so bland. Like chicken seasoned with water. The perspective of the storytelling feels like the standard fare of sad guy who has a bunch of red flag behavior and eventually has his relationship deteriorate for... people growing apart? Frankly, a lot of what Michael says early on in the relationship is like a big cry…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wanted to like this, but it's too frustrating. The concept of playing with size and worlds-within-worlds is good, but the puzzles are pretty simplistic, and don't really take much advantage of it. The controls and also fiddly, making it difficult to place objects. I've also had a few crashes as well. Worst of all though is the drippy storyline of a couple getting together, splitting up, getting back together, blah blah. It has nothing to do with the gameplay, and is just trying to give…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →tl;dr: Maquette is a simple puzzler that presents itself as a metaphor/backdrop to a story told via voiced interludes and text throughout the environment. The story is bland, the puzzles are frustrating and unclear, the mechanics are underutilized, and the controls are incredibly clunky. Mechanics The main gimmick for the game is recursion - each level contains a miniature version of itself that you can kinda interact with. A puzzle might require that you place an object inside the small…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is a mixed bag, and honestly not one I would recommend to anyone I actually liked. First, the good: - It's beautiful, and has nice animations and music to go along with the pretty visuals. Now the bad: - The puzzles are trivial for the most part. - Most puzzle mechanics are one and done. The crystals used to open doors exist for a single level before disappearing entirely. At no point does the game seriously make an attempt to challenge the player by mixing the mechanics, or adding…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The puzzles were full of personality, and their concepts and presentation were excellent. However, the overall design, controls, and narrative felt somewhat lacking. The game had the potential to be amazing, but compared to the creativity of the puzzles, the other aspects felt too ordinary, which was rather disappointing.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game Pass Loses Six More Games On January 31 [Anuchard, Broforce Forever, Darkest Dungeon, Death's Door,Maquette.Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem].
neutral · AI labelView post →The puzzles are somewhat simplistic and the level design could do more to guide the player to solutions, especially early on, because even though the puzzles are simple, you may miss the solution because you just have no idea what you're looking for. The story is also simplistic, one-dimensional, and frankly, a bit played out. The pacing felt wrong, the relationship's turn for the worse seemed to happen quite suddenly, even though it was clear from the very beginning that's where the story was…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Games leaving Game Pass on February 1st. - Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem - Darkest Dungeon - Deaths Door - Broforce - Maquette - Anuchard
neutral · AI labelView post →Its bland, boring, and overall not fun. Also quit with the freaking cutscenes every two seconds. art is nice
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Maquette falls into that increasingly-common category of games with a creative puzzle mechanic that's tied together by a story with a heavy theme. (See also: Monocage, Braid, It Takes Two, RiME, The Unfinished Swan, Superliminal, A Fisherman's Tale, Gorogoa, et cetera.) I found the story parts difficult to listen to, but not because they're bad in any sense: they're well-written and voiced, and mesh with the puzzles and level design in meaningful ways. You can skip cutscenes by holding…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Played Maquette on Xbox, and it was a really nice experience. Short puzzle game, more storytelling than game, but was cool to play another game that reflects some of my current thoughts and life goals. Not that I'm in a relationship, but it does reflect some attitudes towards life in general
positive · AI labelView post →Xbox Game Pass Confirms 5 More Games Coming in July 2023. - Maquette (Consoles/PC) - July 19 - Figment 2: Creed Valley (Cloud/Consoles/PC) - July 20 - The Wandering Village (Cloud/Consoles/PC) - July 20 - Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem (Cloud/PC/Xbox Series X) - July 25 - Venba (Consoles/PC) - July 31
neutral · AI labelView post →I wanted to like this game, I really did. In theory it has a lot going for it from the interesting story to the absolutely beautiful visualss... but it just does everything possible to make liking it impossible. It's glitchy, there is no v-sync, you will be soft locked often, it crashes, the puzzles are unwieldy and most of them are pretty unengaging, the few puzzles that are actually difficult are only difficult because their parameters are poorly explained to the player or just not…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Maquette positive: beautiful artstyle atmospheric cool puzzle concept (very similar to Superliminal) decent voice acting negative: clunky and unintuitive controls boring narrative uninteresting gameplay easy to break the game a little short several crashes in the last level speedrun achievements (unacceptable with said flaws)
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Up until the final level I would have said that it's worth buying discounted if you are into puzzle games and if you aren't easily frustrated. The game looks pretty nice and the core gameplay mechanics are kinda cool, which is great. What's not so great is that the controls are really weird. It is often harder to place the objects in the right spot than to figure out the right spot, which is frustrating. The story is also very superficial and told in a way that is not engaging at all. It's…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The developer of this game has a website. This game is their only game, and there is a link to it on the website. But the link is broken, it's missing the p in https. Not severely broken, but just enough that it doesn't work. A minor fix would solve it, but it appears no one's home to fix it. This sums up the game itself as well.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A short puzzle game with puzzles based around interacting with the same objects at different scales. Padded with a sequence of tedious but skippable spoken dialogs about a failed relationship. A few of the puzzles are unintuitive and/or involve a lot of walking long distances, and the last level crashes if you interact with the main object the wrong way (the object is recursive, and you have to be careful to select the outermost object; the game crashes it you accidentally select the inner…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →An ok puzzle game with a novel concept. Controls could use polish. I just started skipping every cutscene, because they make you sit through every agonising moment of just the most vacuous relationship. I'm glad it starts falling apart in chapter 3.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Feels like a mix between "What Remains of Edith Finch" and "Superliminal". Fairly good, though pretty poorly optimized and rough around the edges.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Maquette, developed by Graceful Decay and published by Annapurna Interactive, is a first-person puzzle adventure built around a singular, poetic idea: a world nested inside itself, endlessly repeating in shifting scales. The game revolves around a recursive model—an ornate miniature sitting at the center of each environment—and whatever you do to the model is echoed in the full-sized world around you. This creates an elegant foundation for a puzzle system where small actions ripple outward into…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Available today The Cave (Cloud and Console) Techtonica (Game Preview) (Cloud, Console, and PC) Toem (Cloud, Console, and PC) July 19 Maquette (Console and PC) July 20 Figment 2: Creed Valley (Cloud, Console, and PC) The Wandering Village (Cloud, Console, and PC) July 25 Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) July 31 Venba (Console and PC) August 1 Celeste (Cloud, Console, and PC)
neutral · AI labelView post →This game truly is a Masterpiece. Exceedingly beautiful Art-Style and amazingly unique Puzzles throughout the entire game, all underlined by a very lovely Story.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Imagine if Portal had a cutscene ever 30 seconds and made you listen to the Romance of Cave Johnson and Glados. There is very little gameplay in this game and even less puzzles. Make small things big to walk over gaps and make big things small to unlock doors. That's the game. I didn't like Superliminal very much already but compared to this game it was a marvelous experience far and above what this has to offer.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Maquette didn't lose me right away. I was drawn in by the promise of an interesting story, really good music, and puzzle mechanics with lots of potential. The first thing that took me out of it was how poorly the game runs. My computer can run much more graphically high-end games than this, but Maquette had a choppy framerate and multiple crash bugs for me, and the game stutters when it transitions to cutscene. As I played through the rest of the game, the rest of the promising elements lost…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I regret pushing this game into my backlog instead of refunding it while I could. The game looks neat and the puzzles are promising. The story is generic "depressing_sob.txt" which I am used to bearing through in walking simulators. But I am convinced the devs have not played their own game. The camera updates are locked to some arbitrary low framerate so any movement feels like I am dragging my face on sandpaper. The devs acknowledged it in some discussion thread back in 2021 but never did…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So. I should say I recommend Maquette. Lightly. I'll start by what I didn't like about the game. The backstory is really cringy AF. You can skip it, and I was surely off the bandwagon by the 2nd time I heard them. The concept is cool, But I feel better used in other games. Some puzzles are excellent, some puzzles are clunky. But the fun balance is there. I made it through the end in less than 5 hours looking two times for help on the net (both times because the game wasn't clear about what…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's okay. A game to appreciate for an evening. The good: Looks good Recursive 3d puzzles and other variations of this idea (getting a little more crazy closer to the end of the game) Subjective: A story of love and relationship! A somewhat uncommon setting for a puzzle game, but hey. Also a little cliche, but has some good moments. If it's not your cup of tea, you can straight up not read anything (and skip cutscenes) and this won't affect puzzles. The less good: Player physics in…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If the game's pretentious narrative would back off and stop interrupting what would otherwise be some interesting puzzles, I could recommend this one. No player character, I don't care about your relationship drama. That isn't what I am here for, shuts it and go away please.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I want to pre-face my review with an important disclaimer: This game is not the most stable. I played this game years ago on Xbox and couldn’t finish it due to a game-breaking bug on the last chapter. Those bugs persist on the PC version. The discussions are full of people who can’t finish this game because this issue still hasn’t been addressed. This time around I was able to finish the game, but be warned that you are rolling the dice with this game. The game itself is beautiful, and I do…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Movement in the game is very choppy and distracts from the gameplay. As other reviews have reported, this has been known since 2021 and doesn't seem to have been addressed. I've requested a refund.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The puzzles become contrived very quickly, and are constantly interrupted by radio plays.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →#blutoid finally gave up on Maquette last night. Leaving Game Pass + my uncle liked it so I wanted to try it. Cool concept: there's a model within a model ad infinitum and you can move yourself and objects b/w each scale level to solve puzzles... but the puzzles aren't great and the story is meh
negative · AI labelView post →Game Number 5 completed this year Maquette Nice little puzzle game. I really push myself to clean up the trophies for the platinum.
positive · AI labelView post →A good puzzle game using recursion mechanics a la A Fisherman's Tale. Nothing super groundbreaking, but still enjoyable. I found myself stuck on one of the puzzles and the "soultion" I came up with was somewhat janky, maybe that was the intended solution or maybe I just broke the game well enough to progress. Regardless, I did finish the game. The story is cute, and relatable, a little melancholy, but that makes it all the more relatable. Again, othing super groundbreaking in the story…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →New Xbox Gamepass Games: - Techtonica - Toem - The Cave - Maquette - Figment 2: Creed Valley - The Wandering Village - Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem - Celeste - Venba #GameNews https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/07/18/game-pass-july-2023-wave-2-announce/
neutral · AI labelView post →BEAR IN MIND: There is apparently a game-breaking bug towards the end of this game. I and others were able to get around it by restarting the level, but some weren't so lucky, so keep this in mind when buying and for this reason (as well as in general) I'd recommend getting this at a steep sale. Unless you somehow get really, really emotionally invested, then the last few minutes aren't so special that you'll feel really cheated out of the experience, though. (Imho the really cool ♥♥♥♥ is a…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Dreadful. The selling point is the size changing mechanic. It's interesting at first, but underdeveloped. You've quickly seen it all, and the next puzzles are basic, uninspired. The meat of the game has you walking around in large lifeless spaces in search of an interactive object, then walking around plenty more in said large lifeless spaces in search of a spot to use it on. Visuals are not that great. Motion sickness is easy to catch. The music is awful but can be piped down. Object…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's been a year and still can't play with the controller even if it shows controller is supported. Relatively unplayable
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I was really hoping this game would be similar to Superliminal. Only ever so slightly.... Not really sure if you need to be a romantic to enjoy this game? I mean I'm not made out of wood or anything but, dang this turkey blew. Surprised that i absolutely hated the characters from go considering they hired good talent. What's more than that was the actual gameplay that felt so sloooooow and rigid. the game gave up and crashed several times in the end chapter. Not using a crap computer either.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →terrible game but beautiful visuals; the story has good voice acting but glueing it together does not go well and feels artificial; it's similar in vibe to The witness which I also don't like, but nothing even close to Superliminal which is great and deals with similar mechanic of resizing objects; I returned it after the final nail in the coffin which was unblocking wall on the maquette to move through the big wall, it felt so stupid and contrived (the type of bad design puzzle kinda like…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →TLDR: It's a walking simulator with an ok story with some interesting puzzle elements. This was a complicated review for me to write. Firstly, the game is very pretty. Secondly, it runs pretty smoothly, although I did have two issues. One puzzle had huge framerate drops, but was still playable, and I had one crash. Aside from that, it's important to know that this is very much a walking simulator, then a puzzle game in a very distant second. The story was Ok, I didn't find myself able…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →it feels like youre playing a movie. I highly recommend this game if you like games like firewatch, superliminal or florance.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Last night I started Maquette because it's leaving Game Pass at the end of the month. It has pretty visuals that reminds me of both Botany Manor and Jusant. #GamePass #XboxShare #XboxGamePass #BlackSkyGamers
neutral · AI labelView post →what video game song makes you emotional without fail? Meridian by Cannons and Clouds from the Maquette soundtrack. An unknown song from an unknown game. On its surface, it’s about very mundane things, but it absolutely destroys me every listen. It makes me appreciate life, and weep for its end.
neutral · AI labelView post →Screenshot taken from my playthrough stream of Maquette. If I were to describe the experience, it would be 500 Days of Summer: The Game. If you've watched that movie, you know exactly what this game is about. #vtuber #indiegames
neutral · AI labelView post →Stream over! Game crashed on me twice so I guess it was time to call it. 🫠 Still fun tho! Thanks everyone who joined! We raided @smallworldjay.bsky.social who's currently playing Maquette! Go check him out!
positive · AI labelView post →Just completed the game Maquette. I love puzzle games but this one felt way more vague and obtuse than I thought it would. Looked up more than I’d care to mention or admit to haha.
negative · AI labelView post →I thought this would be a nice lighthearted puzzle game. A couple hours later, it's tugging at my heartstrings, and making me melancholy over my life's choices. Still a fun puzzle game, though.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game wasn't horrible, but not worth $20 either. A fair price for this game would be around $2-$3. The story wasn't super engaging, and rarely even related to the gameplay; the story and game are just sort of shoved together. Also, the gameplay itself is good at first, but gets old after a bit. The game is a bit buggy and even crashed a couple of times, and the gameplay only lasts a couple hours, so paying $20 for this is like paying $10 per hour of gameplay. My advice would be to not…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Overall, I enjoyed Maquette a lot. The environments and visual effects are quite interesting. The puzzles were a good mix of ideas. I couldn't figure out a couple of them, but the ones I did figure out left me feeling all kinds of proud of myself. I'm glad you can mute the music. If there was a story-free game mode, it would have been twice as good. It seemed like every time I was really starting to enjoy myself, there would be a snippet of someone's failing relationship that I would have to…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Haven't finished the game yet, but I made sure I read a lot of reviews before buying this, since it's very mixed. Deciding whether or not you want this game depends on what you're down with. If you enjoy lovely art direction/atmosphere, decent writing with great voice acting, and okay use of recursion, then this will be a very pleasant experience for you, as it is for me. If you want something that provides comfortable controls, complex/clever puzzles, and an unpredictable story, that's not…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →An alright puzzle game with a fantastic sense of presentation but a godawful story. Game would have honestly been majorly improved with the removal of said story. Its just really bad and really really cringe. Hate it 2/10
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A work of art in every sense of the word! And it's much more than that! I expected just an experimental game built on the idea of the "fractal space" mechanics. And that is very cool and mind bending in itself, but this game delivers MUCH MORE. Before and after the levels centered around "the dome", there are other levels based on fantastic ideas and with incredible visuals. They could've got away with much less, just building levels and puzzles on the main idea, but they did more, and I'm…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What a great game! The puzzles were like nothing I've ever seen. I liked the story and the music as well. I've recommended this game to others, and the final puzzle was a real head banger. Hope they make another one.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a cute game with some nice art and cool mechanics, that I feel like still have a lot of unused potential. On the flip side there are some bugs and it's not too hard to get stuck somewhere you weren't supposed to go, but it's nothing too major.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Didn't like it. Storyline was depressing as hell
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →story so mid buy on sale. puzzle alright
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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