Is This Seat Taken?, the debut release by two-man dev team Poti Poti Studio, is a charming and surprisingly complex puzzle game based around seating anthropomorphised shapes in a specific order. From football stadiums to school classrooms to movie premieres, your job is to seat these shapes so their quirky demands are met. These needs range from reasonable (“I want to sit by the window”), to strange (“I want to wear my cowboy hat in a packed theatre”) to hilariously contradictory (“I hate strong odours but I doused myself in cologne”).
The concept sounds simple, but as co-creator and programmer Ausiàs Dalmau explained, it came from humble origins: “We were at a conference in Barcelona and they were talking about how ideas can come up from any situation. They mentioned a game on a bus; it was a first-person game with physics […] so we started to imagine how we would do a game with a bus and we came up with it.” That initial spark evolved into something far more ambitious than a bus ride.
Rather than generic stages, levels unfold across real cities as you follow rhombus Nat, an aspiring movie star chasing a dream across the globe. Nat’s journey to meet their idol Luca, whose initial frosty reception to Nat evolves into a mutual friendship, ties everything together in a way that feels grounded but lighthearted. As Ausiàs put it, “We wanted an antagonist that wasn’t actually an antagonist, just to reflect that we all have good and bad days and we can also be the antagonist sometimes.” The plot adds heart without overshadowing the puzzles, and keeps progression fresh in a genre where games can feel mind-numbingly repetitive.
The depth of level design is where Is This Seat Taken? shines. Each city ramps up the complexity, introducing new mechanics that change the way you think about the game mechanics. Early on, objects are cosmetic; later, they’re functional, like streetlamps that attract bugs or AC units that cool down hot shapes. Shapes who want to chat need to sit together on a bus but apart in school. These little nuances make the game’s 32 levels feel completely unique and different – even when they’re set in similar locations. As Ausiàs told me, “Choosing the right color palette or color accents for each city was probably the most difficult part, because it had to reflect the city, the current weather station, and Nat’s overall feeling.” That attention to detail pays off, with each location feeling alive and not just like a backdrop.
That sense of polish didn’t happen by accident. “All the experience that we got working for others obviously helped in this game,” Ausiàs said. “Sergi Pérez [the game’s other co-creator and artist] mostly worked on mobile games […] free-to-play mobile games have a lot of immediate feedback and they have a lot of care on simple animations to make the player feel good while playing, so that’s definitely reflected in the game.”
Also of note is the clean, minimalist art style that is not only easy on the eyes, but visually conveys information to the player with clarity. “Sergi is more of a graphic designer than a traditional illustrator,” Ausiàs explained. “That’s why the game’s art style is that clean and simple. We also wanted each character’s expression to be very clear and easy to read. After all, it’s a puzzle game, and we didn’t want to overwhelm the player with too much visual information.”
Once you beat every level in a city without any unhappy shapes, you unlock a special bonus level that doesn’t tie into the main story but is nonetheless incredibly entertaining and charming. London’s museum is particularly funny, where you have to arrange the exhibits themselves so they’re all satisfied, and let me tell you, those exhibits have strong opinions. My favourite level in the whole game, though, is New York’s blind date setup, where you have to seat the shapes in couples so they’re all happy with their prospective partners. It’s incredibly sweet.
Is This Seat Taken? launched on PC, console, and mobile simultaneously on August 7th. This is no small feat for a two-man studio, but Poti Poti pulled it off. “We wanted to deliver a similar experience on all platforms,” Ausiàs said. On Switch and Steam Deck, that meant creating a cursor assist to mimic mouse control. For mobile, zoom options and forgiving placement ensure it works even on small screens. The game feels equally at home no matter where you play.
I honestly have nothing to complain about here. The pacing is spot-on, the mechanics are rock solid, and the story gives the game just enough narrative drive without taking away from its smart design. As Ausiàs summed it up when talking about future plans: “We don’t want to do content just to do it, since it will feel repetitive […] If we work on new cities, it will be with new scenarios and ideas.” The care and restraint from this incredibly talented two-man team shines through in every level, and my only wish is that many more are to come.
4/5
Is This Seat Taken? is available on Steam, Nintendo Switch and mobile.
