Mini Review: Is This Seat Taken? (Switch)

I’m the kind of wallflower who has turned seat-picking into a finely tuned craft. With that calibration, I pictured a tile-swapper such as Is This Seat Taken? to be a breeze – and, well, by-and-large that was spot on. This charming self-published project may not serve up revolutionary mechanics, yet it’s a nice and breezy grab-and-go title that’ll lightly scratch any itch for low-pressure brain-teasers.

The threads holding it together revolve around a rhombus with theatrical ambitions (honestly, it is). In practice, Is This Seat Taken is all about seating shapes in the correct configuration so every little polygon’s wishes come true. One round may be in a cab or museum, the next on a ferry or a picture house, but each “passenger” – or more accurately, each stylised block – has its own set of restrictions, and they can be surprisingly picky.

Matters begin gently: place these bodies inside a taxi so passengers B and D get the windows, thank you kindly. Each new location, however, folds in an extra twist. In a cinema, certain shapes text or gab; aboard a boat you’ll divide raucous partygoers from quiet photographers; and absolutely no one wants proximity to the stinkers who skipped deodorant.

Carrying this out in real life would leave me in a flop-sweat, yet the game stays utterly laid-back. No countdown clock, no penalties for a misplaced square. You can even complete a round with a shape or two sulking – you’ll just miss the coveted heart-shaped kudos, and, frankly, my esteem.

Crowded scenes sometimes flirt with pure experimentation, and with no hint mechanic I ended up yanking everyone out to reboot more than once. I’d have adored a ‘rewind/blank slate’ toggle for those moments. Thankfully, no conundrum lingers for long: I blazed through the lot – each “chapter” clocks in at five or six mini-levels – in about six hours. The minuscule tasks themselves are bite-sized, ideal for anyone stealing a ten-minute slot while fusilli simmers. It feels engineered for exactly that.

The pointer is slick, the cast is endearing, and you can tap and drag on the touchscreen in handheld. If that screams “mobile puzzler,” it isn’t wrong – while I enjoyed each new wrinkle each time I re-launched, chewing through two-or-three stages back-to-back edged toward déjà-vu.

In sum, Is This Seat Taken is a sturdy quick-fire puzzle game. It doesn’t reinvent the genre, but the satisfaction loop of satisfying every finicky requirement is tuned for low-key amusement. It won’t anchor you for marathon sessions, but it will loudly reassure you that your own seat-selection ritual is more than mere fussiness.