Vignettes is a beautiful shape-shifting puzzler out now on PC

Vignettes, one of my favorite mobile games, is now out on PC—and it's a "reworked" version of the original with "numerous improvements and previously unreleased content".

It's a very light puzzle game in which you rotate colorful objects, and as you pull them around they'll change shape. For example, when you stand a fire hydrant on its end so that you can only see one color, it morphs into a garbage can. Rotate the garbage can at the right angle and it will transform into a curled-up cat. You'll get the idea if you watch the trailer, above.

It's full of charming little interactions and secrets to find: the fire hydrant will spray water in a circle, and if you tap the garbage can the lid will open and a pair of cat's eyes will peep at you from the darkness, hinting at the next object.

Some of the puzzles take a few minutes of prodding to solve, but they're mostly simple, and I find it very relaxing. That's largely down to the soundtrack, created by David Kanaga of Proteus and Oikospiel fame. It's equal parts charming and hypnotic.

At $7.19/£5.84, which includes a 10% launch discount, it's a lot more expensive than the mobile version. But if you haven't grabbed it on your phone, this sounds like the definitive edition. You can buy it on Steam.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.