Set in a newly renovated castle, you have one job in Paver: Tidy Up Together to lay all the paving slabs. The problem is they have been deposited in the courtyard in absolute chaos. Luckily for you, you have the original designer’s layout plans.
A Paver’s Worst Nightmare
Paver: Tidy Up Together starts with you entering the courtyard to masses of paving slabs in random heaps. There is no organisation; that’s your job. If you love creating order from chaos, this is the game for you; play solo or with friends. Either way, the goal is the same: sort and lay 4,064 paving slabs in the predetermined layout. There are 35 different paver shapes in red, white, black, and yellow, and the combination of shape and colour creates the final layout goal.
High ambition slow play
In Paver: Tidy Up Together, you can use three modes to play: normal, sandbox and no skill. With normal mode, you unlock the skills as you go; sandbox has all skills unlocked, and no skill is self-explanatory. No skill is definitely for anyone looking to play this for the long haul, as this is not a quick game.
The skills are slow to unlock but, once active, are helpful. We have area highlight, carrying capacity, layout plans, auto placement and auto collect. There is a skill tree, which you have to do in order. Each skill starts with small assistance and increases as you progress. I found the assistance too low and less helpful than I hoped.
Solo vs Co-op gameplay
I started Paver: Tidy Up Together in solo mode and found the lack of tutorial and control explanations frustrating. In solo mode, the tutorial would not tick off the first goals, meaning controls like throwing down a paver you didn’t want never activated. Once I started the co-op mode and we started laying down the pavers, the tutorial worked and all controls unlocked.
Because of the high number of skill points required and the low assistance level, solo mode is extremely slow to make progress. However, as Paver: Tidy Up Together is designed to be played with friends, this was not a surprise, even if it was a little disappointing. The skills themselves power up from all players laying pavers, but work as personal use when you actually use them. This combination worked well and helped ease frustration of powering up skills, rather than having a cool down between uses.
Mosaic courtyard bliss
If you love the look of older mosaic courtyards, you will love the final result of the layout. Beautiful mosaics in multiple patterns are throughout this castle’s landscape. A pleasing-to-the-eye courtyard that you can imagine sitting, relaxing and reading in. A combination of symmetrical and non-symmetrical layouts that allows you and your teammates to work together or randomly. You can work on the same paver shapes to complete the 35-paver goal faster. Alternatively, pick a random section and don’t worry about the 35-paver goal.
Accessibility
There are no accessibility options in Paver: Tidy Up Together, but there are basic controls for different volume levels for music, ambience, and gameplay sounds. Controls are standard, with no controller options. The field of view can be changed, though, which can aid with motion sickness problems, which I found very helpful. Brightness can also be changed, which helps those with light sensitivity.
A good addition to organising games
Though Paver: Tidy Up Together has some issues, especially with the solo mode, it has great potential. The solo mode’s relaxed progress, with skills building slowly, is great if you want a long-term game. However, not much changes, and it risks becoming tedious and boring. It might benefit from a slight change to the balance between skill point earning and skill-level assistance.
Co-op gameplay, however, has a much better balance and is more enjoyable. This is thanks to the combination of shared labour and much faster skill-power-up progression. I can see this being great entertainment for a group of friends looking to hang out. More DLC levels for different environments would work great for this game and could open up the potential for all sorts of worlds and landscape designs.
I am sure Paver: Tidy Up Together is a game I’ll come back to when my family wants to have a game night.
Platforms: Steam
Publishers: Games Together, Gamersky Games
Developers: Games Together
Played On: PC/Steam
Key Provided By: Keymailer
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