It's a Wrap!

« It's a Wrap! combines two types of gameplay into a neat little package, which shows how far one unique idea can go in the indie space. The narrative elements aren’t extraordinary, and the presentation is decent. But it’s the mix of puzzle and platforming gameplay that will draw in players and keep them engaged. The game features three movies for Johnny to act his way through but it could have used more variety in terms of scene design. It’s a Wrap! is challenging and satisfying and I hope the developers explore the full potential of their ideas in a sequel. »

« It’s A Wrap! is a unique puzzle platforming game that has you playing as both the star of a movie and the director. It can get frustrating at times, but the added hint system helps you progress and complete the film. »

« It’s A Wrap! is a clever puzzle game that will tie your mind in knots as you figure out just what is needed to pull off each stunt. While the third set of levels here doesn’t work as well for me as the first two, I still had a fun time going on this journey with Johnny, his director, and the rest of their crew. If you’re looking for a fun new take on the puzzle genre It’s A Wrap! is well worth a look. »

« Puzzles in It's a Wrap can be broken down into 3 steps: Figure out what you need to do, figure out how to do it, and do it. The game tells you what the objective technically is (usually get from point A to point B), but the real obstacle may be something else. To take an example from the demo, the obstacle might be "Don't be seen by the giant robot." This means that the real objective is "line up the props in such a way that you can be behind cover for the entire route." This can result in puzzles being oddly unsatisfying, where the first or second step is the hardest and the final step is just going through the motions. The closest comparison for me is The Incredible Machine. That game has you placing objects such as bowling balls and trampolines in such a way that when you start the level, everything moves in such a way as to complete an objective, e.g. "get the mouse to the cheese." It works because you don't know exactly what's going to happen until you push Play, so when it works, it's incredibly satisfying and you win instantly. In It's a Wrap, in most levels, you can tell that it's going to work by scrubbing back and forth in the timeline. I see other reviewers that complained about the platforming difficulty. It's really not hard at all. I'm an experienced but not an expert platform player (Celeste, Hollow Knight, and Shovel Knight are the hardest platformers I've beaten, with great difficulty), and only a couple of levels had sufficiently precise platforming that I couldn't win in a couple of tries, once everything was lined up correctly. I have a feeling that those reviewers found an incorrect puzzle solution and tried to brute-force it into working; I found a couple such "alternate" solutions that I quickly gave up on because I figured it wasn't intended to be that hard. The game is a little short, with 25 levels altogether, which took me about 10 hours to complete. Some levels took only a few minutes, while others stumped me for the better part of an hour. Several of them have a lot of moving parts that seem arbitrary until you figure out what you're supposed to be trying to do (i.e. step 1 is the hardest one). Overall, this is a clever and unique game that's well worth a play, but if you don't love fiddly puzzles or are not decent at platforming, you may find it frustrating. »