A Little to the Left: Seeing Stars DLC Review

Crazy cat lady? No, no, I’m the crazy organizing lady.

You don’t know how excited I was when I saw that A Little to the Left was getting another DLC. I loved this game and there just hasn’t been another organizing/tidying game that hit the same. Back when I played the game originally and the previous DLC, Cupboards and Drawers, I expressed my desire for more. Well, we got more!

Seeing Stars gives us 38 more levels for us to tidy and organize. Instead of having a centralized theme that all the levels follow, this time the theme is that there is no theme. There is a decent variety of levels here, both in what items you’ll be interacting with and the type of puzzle it is. And you know what the best part is? They’re all great! Just like in the main game and previous DLC, you’ll be interacting with various objects which you’ll be turning, lifting, or picking up/putting down. The items and the way you need to interact with t

hem vary depending on the level. There are levels where you’ll be organizing items into a drawer where everything has its own place (with the hidden aesthetic rule still applying), organizing books by the design on the bind, perfectly placing toppings to make a perfect pizza, rotating corn and noticing their shared patterns and the patterns they happen to make, organizing bells by type, and so on. A few items even have caps or pieces that you have to put on. Just like before, items will also give a satisfying sound and “click” into place when placed in a right spot (apart from a few exceptions).

In addition, Seeing Stars does bring in two unique aspects to the table. The first is that some items are interactive. This means that some of the items have a interact point where you can click or click and drag to get them into a different state. These do factor into solutions, with items needing to be in one state or another for a solution, giving levels more variety to them. These interactive items don’t pop up as often, but I did find most of them were easy to notice they were interactive. The other aspect is that this DLC has a total of 100 solutions. For comparison, the main game has a total of 108 solutions. This means that the majority of the levels here are multiple solution levels, with some having an upwards of five solutions.

There are five levels that are locked behind the amount of solutions, or Stars, you found. You can actually unlock these and do them right as you get enough Stars. The first and last of these locked levels are easy, but the other three? Oh boy, the other three.

In terms of difficulty, I’d say this DLC is a notch more difficult (more than a “bit more” but still not a “more” if that makes sense). A lot of the solutions do require you to look at it and think about all the items in front of you more, with some of those being pretty difficult. Some levels require you to take into account all design aspects you see for a solution or the items will be the same, but will need to be organized in a different way for each section. I aimed to not use the hint system unless I was absolutely stuck, and when I did, it fell down into several categories. These were: obvious in hindsight, never was going to get, ones I got but didn’t get it fully (missing one aspect of it), ones I knew the solution but needed a small nudge, or I did get it but I had one or two items in the wrong place. Just make sure you remember that this DLC introduced interactive items as two of the levels I got a hint for due to “missing one aspect of it” were when I didn’t know an item had an interact point.

One aspect I really liked about this DLC is how some of the levels where you’re organizing items in an organizer, a drawer, or a shelf, also have multiple solutions as well. One solution is finding the perfect place for every item, while the other solution is arranging them on a separate table (which is either beside it or under it as these items are being organized in a drawer). Or both solutions are to organize them to put them away, but there are two different ways to thanks to the added addition of the interactive items. I was not expecting this and it was such a happy surprise.

The cat also makes an appearance in this DLC and she is still on her good behavior and being cute. However, it seems like she’s not alone anymore. Some levels will have the cat appear at the end, but after the first level where this happens, the white cat will be accompanied by another cat. And then another. And then another. These cats are all cute, and I love how a sphinx cat was also included, but I have to wonder. Are we becoming a crazy cat lady? Or are we just catsitting? Well, either way, at least they all aren’t being cheeky.

Along with this DLC, the hint system got updated. This isn’t just for the levels featured in Seeing Stars, but for every level this game has, main game or DLC. This update makes it so the levels with multiple solutions show hints for every solution instead of just one. I know I rambled a lot on a different hint system last time, but I do like this update. I remember how the hint for multiple solution levels were very often the easiest solution. I’m so glad you can now see hints for every solution, especially since this DLC does have some doozies. The hints take the form of a scribbled out notebook, which you need to erase the scribbles to see the hint, but the more nuanced solutions do add a red marker to help point out an important element.

That said, the new hints are pretty good. There were only one, maybe two, of the hints that I didn’t understand. The only way I can think of to improve this current hint system is maybe tie each solution to a specific star so you know which hint relates to which solution. It’s not really needed, though.

Oh! I also noticed that you now get a choice on replaying the level, going to the menu, or going to the next level by default, rather than the game sending you to the next level automatically if it was your first time doing that level. This wasn’t a problem for single solution levels, but it is for multiple solution ones, especially if you like doing all the solutions together. As someone that likes doing all the possible solutions at the same time, I really liked this change. It’s especially great considering the majority of levels here have multiple solutions, with some levels having 5 different solutions. Plus, it helped this DLC sidestep the annoyance of having to get out of the next level to go back into the level you were just in to finish out the solution hunt.

To close this out, Seeing Stars also has some chill, calming music and sound effects for items when you pick them up, put them down, and interact with them. I think my favorite item in this DLC sound-wise was the post-it notes. I was just a sucker for the “quickly flipping through all the notes in a stack” sound. The item that was a close second was the sliding whistle item, as it made that whistle sound as you moved the handle.

Verdict

I absolutely loved A Little to the Left’s Seeing Stars DLC. Having more organizing goodness (and cuteness) was already good and I had confidence that this DLC would be great, but it quickly went to being amazing as I was going through all the levels. Aside from a few interactive items being hard to tell they were interactive and two of the locked levels having details that were too small, I had fun playing through all the levels. I liked the addition of interactive objects, I liked the added difficulty and complexity to the levels, and I loved how this DLC was practically the opposite of the previous one in terms of solutions per level. Seeing Stars had the majority of levels with multiple solutions, with the occasional one solution level; where Cupboards and Drawers had majority one solution levels, with the occasional multiple solution level.

This is totally person preference, but whereas there were some levels or level types I didn’t like in the main game or the previous DLC, Seeing Stars didn’t have any of them. All the puzzle types and themes I loved were included here! It also seemed like each level managed to one up the previous one to me. Not to mention the finale level (that’s right before the credits level with the great cutscene) was even better than in Cupboards and Drawers!

As you can probably tell, I absolutely recommend A Little to the Left’s new DLC, Seeing Stars. I was a bit surprised there were no space themed puzzles, I was even waiting for one to pop up, but I had so much fun playing Seeing Stars and did help me relax and take my mind off of some things. I even couldn’t help myself and played the whole DLC all night in one go.