Assemble with Care

Assemble with Care is a cozy puzzle game from Ustwo Games, the studio behind Monument Valley. The protagonist Maria is a globe-trotting antique restorer who arrives in the sun-soaked Italian town of Bellariva and finds the locals' lives — and their treasured possessions — equally in need of repair.

Gameplay is tactile object disassembly and reassembly. Each chapter introduces an item brought to Maria — a tape player, a typewriter, a cuckoo clock, a film camera — and you take it apart screw by screw, find the broken component, fix it, and reassemble it correctly. The interactions are deliberately slow and unhurried, modelled on actual restoration work.

The narrative is woven through each repair. The owners' stories surface through dialogue and the objects themselves — a damaged music box ties to a family secret, a watch holds an undelivered confession. Maria's own backstory threads through the cast as she helps Bellariva's inhabitants reconnect with each other.

The handcrafted visuals are Ustwo's signature: vibrant, painterly, intentionally framed. The soundtrack draws from 80s pop sensibilities. Short — about two hours — and not aimed at puzzle difficulty so much as the emotional craft of restoration.