ReStory Review – Lofi Beats To Restore Electronics To

ReStory is one of the most mentally satisfying games I have ever played. Deconstructing and cleaning electronic gaming consoles and appliances is ridiculously soothing, and the comedic narrative keeps you from dawdling for too long and getting bored. This is the kind of game I can easily see myself playing for a good while to come, as it’s just too easy to get lost in the flow of fixing copuright-free Tamagotchis.

As soon as I saw the trailer for ReStory, I knew I had to play it. I’m not a full-on handyman or anything, but I’ve tinkered with lots of consoles and electronics over the years in the pursuit of fixing them to save some cash, and it’s always been a surprisingly fulfilling experience. Setting that to lo-fi music with a quirky story and a wildly addictive gameplay loop of fixing things and improving your shop makes for one of the year’s standout games that I’ll be playing for some time to come.

There’s a huge variety of electronics to fix and clean, from actual licensed Atari consoles to things like kettles and cameras. Each device has its own unique disassembly process, and each order might require you to replace different parts than the last. The process of figuring out how to take apart each new device as you buy the licenses to repair them is a joy, and it feels as though there are always new tools to use and electronics to disembowel and remake. You also take part in competitions to see how quickly you can rebuild a deconstructed device, which provides a refreshing little challenge.

Throughout ReStory, you go between taking online orders to make extra cash and in-person orders that typically advance the story. It’s a largely goofy tale about running a burgeoning repair shop owned by a fairly shady guy in early 2000s Japan, filled to the brim with quirky customers to get to know. There’s a time system, with days going by and you having to close the shop and go to bed at certain times, as well as having limits to how many days you can take to fix something. It’s a smart system that works surprisingly well with the laid-back repairing gameplay, as it keeps you from stopping to restore the same devices for too long, lightly pushing you along whilst making the game as consistently enjoyable as possible.

You’re always getting faster in ReStory, but it never takes away from the cozy vibe.

The wide range of tool improvements makes you feel as though you’re always improving your shop and repair process in pretty major ways. From devices that clean items for you as you multitask to a shredder that turns trash into cash, your process gets smoother and more beneficial with each boon, and I found that every upgrade made me enjoy how quickly and efficiently I could take things apart. It’s a tough balance to make each upgrade in a game about relaxing iterative in a way that boosts your speed, but ReStory manages to pull it off.

You can even decorate the interior of your shop using purchased items like troll dolls, maneki-neko, singing mounted bass, and more. These provide you with a boost to the store’s “zen” whilst also allowing you to customize your workspace to your liking. My place looked goofy as hell pretty quickly, and I’m glad such a small feature was included, as it further sells the cozy tone ReStory conveys so well.

The presentation of ReStory is excellent, perfectly complementing the lofi, early-aughts vibe. The colors aren’t too extreme or overly vibrant for the most part, and the character designs are lively, selling the exaggerated archetypes of a good few members of the cast. The variety of music is delightful too, with many tracks being chill music that’s easy to flow with, taking each repair experience to the next level.