Whisper of the House takes the cosy isometric decorating of Unpacking and unleashes it upon an entire town like an ultra-relaxing endless mode

Unpacking is one of my favourite videogames, where you grab things out of boxes and neatly pop them around an isometric home. It's pretty linear though—not a complaint, it needs to be to serve its excellent narrative—but I've longed for a similar game with fewer shackles ever since.

Whisper of the House is that exact game, if my time with its demo is anything to go by. It takes the same cosy isometric vibes with wee pixel art decor as Unpacking, but gives me that bit more freedom to decorate however I want.

Instead of following one character's life as told through the places they live, Whisper of the House plonks me in a town where I can rearrange both my own space and the spaces of villagers who reside there. I'm first tasked with getting my own place in order, before mail requests come through each morning from folk who want my help moving in.

A wee robot helps me pull items out of a moving box one by one, and I can rotate objects and place them on top of each other—plants that go on shelves, boxes that perch atop refrigerators, plushies that adorn an otherwise plain bedspread. Each location has multiple rooms, but I'm not actually confined to placing the objects inside each one.

Wanna stick a microwave in the hallway? A little weird, but sure thing. You're the interior designer. Want to keep every photo in one specific location? You can easily bring items between rooms as you please. It's not quite as tactile as Unpacking—I can't open every single cupboard and drawer to store things out of sight, which bummed me out a little—but every item is gorgeously crafted with a wee description when you hover over it.

There are some loose parameters around each villager request. My first job is the dog-loving Luna, and while I'm given free reign across most of her house, her one request is that I create a gallery of photos in her hallway. My second task is a little more out there, requiring me to literally go back in time and help my client clean up his move-in day mess, which I guess makes things better in the future. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but having to tidy up everything scattered across a tiny apartment broke up the standard "grab item from box, place item" pace.

One of my favourite little additions in Whisper of the House, though, is being able to roam around the town and rummage in various dumpsters for trinkets and doodads. I am an absolute clutter fiend in The Sims—if it doesn't look majorly lived in, I don't want it—so grabbing random Ramune bottles and snacks to adorn my tiny loft apartment with was a real treat.

Even more furniture can be unlocked through nabbing vouchers by completing tasks or picking them up out in the world and then spending them on decor loot boxes. Normally I'd much prefer to pick and choose items myself, but being given random pieces encouraged me to think outside the box and use items I would have normally condemned to my storage for all eternity.

The demo is pretty short overall, but thankfully it's not a long wait to dip my toe into the full thing, as Whisper of the House launches on August 27.