I am happy to report that Building Relationships has more than one joke, and most of them are pretty good
You might have caught this one during Day Of The Devs earlier this year. It’s stuck with me since because the developer Tanat seemed like a rad dude, and also because there’s nothing I cherish more than taking a bad pun and just absolutely going to town on it, marrow and all. Building Relationships is about buildings forming relationships in a Love Islandy scenario, though without the reality TV framing you might find in say, Crush House. But the real gag here is the commitment to the bit. Besides that, it’s just a really charming and fun N64-style 3D platformer.
It also features the sort wonky physics that definitely wouldn’t get Ninty’s seal of quality, but work brilliantly here, especially since your character consists largely of angles but still insists on, you know, performing motions.
The demo sees you roll around the island meeting other structures. Some of them have quests for you. Some of them just want to evangelise about bouldering. You can introduce yourself as either ‘Billding’ or ‘Cementha’. You can go fishing for minivans and collect coins, but you can also just make your own joy, especially once you find the double jump and dash upgrades. One secret criteria I use to weight a game’s soul on my scales is whether it’s fun to climb things just for the sake of climbing them; to be at advanced height – in a position of aerial bigitude. It absolutely is here. Some hidden coins don’t hurt, either, but I must insist:
Please get a sound for when I collect a coin. Collecting a coin without a jingly sound feels like getting fizzy nose then not sneezing. It would have ruined my day, but then I noticed that my house simply would not stop hopping between where their feet should be during conversations. It made it look like they really needed a piss, which spurred me onward.
Also, the camera is a little drunk. Not super drunk, but it’s definitely had a few. It’s a bit stubborn in a wonky sort of way.
The conversations are fun though. There’s several upgrade chests hidden about named ‘chester’. The one by the beach asks me if I identify more as a bottom floor or a rooftop (disgusting Switch house erasure). The boathouse is stuck on the lake so wants me to go around finding every fish. Eventually I get invited to a picnic, where I have to build flatpack furniture in another minigame. The flatpack furniture is only about 70% as frustrating as its real-life counterpart to assemble.
The demo doesn’t extend much beyond there. Stray too far on the island, and you’ll run into ‘relationship barriers’ which prevent further exploring. But there’s still plenty of nooks to explore. A tip: no matter how high you think you can get, and fast you think you can fly across the island, you can probably do it higher and faster. You probably don’t need me to tell you that whether you enjoy this one or not is going to be very vibes-based. But that’s dating, and also exactly what demos are for.