Preview – Restory

I owned a video game store for just short of a year. It’s a bit difficult to talk about, because it didn’t go well. Running a store doesn’t gel well with generalized anxiety disorder, as it turns out, and I just couldn’t take the stress. Anyway, COVID hit right after we closed, which would have sank us anyway, so…

My favourite part of the job was repairing old hardware, a service you can’t always find at stores these days (there were a few stores in town, and we were the only one). It was great when I was refurbishing dead Game Gears, or the time I repaired a guy’s TurboDuo. Less so when I diagnosed a dead CPU in someone’s childhood SNES that they were planning on playing with their sister as a way to reconnect.

I got a little choked up there…

So, Restory is right up my alley. It’s not the only clean-and-fix game out there, but its focus on retro hardware gives it an edge in my book. 

REPAIR OR REPLACE

The whole clean-and-fix genre is one of (I hope) few instances where I really don’t know where the concept originated. I previously covered Wyrmhall: Brush and Banter, but there’s also the similar Trash Goblin that was apparently developed at, essentially, the same time. I’d almost say it’s a fork of VA-11 HALL-A, but that game has more of a focus on conversation. Ew. More likely, the progenitor is Papers, Please, which made working fun! But also somehow more depressing.

Anyway, none of them have you taking apart an Atari 2600. Restory takes you back to the ‘00s. The opening caption says it’s the “early 2000s,” but it seems to be, at the very least, the mid-2000s, since among the things you fix are a Motorola Razr (2004), and a PlayStation Portable (2005).

The general narrative has folks from the neighbourhood bringing you items that you need to fix. Sometimes, this just requires you to dismantle the object and clean all the parts, which, in the real world, is pretty unlikely. Other times, you must identify the parts that are broken (unlike the real world, this is always very simple), and replace them.

You can get replacement parts by using your computer to browse an online marketplace. You can either purchase the parts piecemeal, or you can buy broken electronics for cheap and harvest them for working donor parts. It’s pretty true to the life of a tinkerer.

SORNY FUNBUCKET

There’s only a brief whiff of the story in Restory. Some occasionally slightly unsavoury characters visit. You sometimes have to make dialogue choices, and in some of them, I wasn’t exactly sure what was being asked because I blanked out on the conversation. However, I’m not totally sure what the (re)story is going to be about. I would assume that, with a moniker that includes the word “story,” it would be under a spotlight, but most of what’s in the demo just facilitates taking things apart.

The whole taking things apart is pretty enjoyable, at least. As I mentioned previously, the items include legally distinct electronics, but since Atari is in on publishing the game, the Atari hardware is entirely true-to-life. I’ve taken apart 2600s and CX40s, and can confirm their innards are authentically represented.

The biggest departure from reality is that you don’t need to solder or desolder anything. That’s the best part! Here, if you want to pull a switch off a motherboard, you just yank it off.

There isn’t a whole lot of complexity, which fits the mood. So far, the worst you bump into is rust on metal parts that need to be sanded off. I’m not sure what additional complexity needs to be added. I just feel like you should have the ability to break parts if you do things sloppily. Goodness knows I have.

Still, it’s something I find relaxing. I guess if I want something more complicated, there’s always Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop.

FIXED WITH PARTS LEFT OVER

Beyond repairing stuff for story characters, you can also pick up side-jobs online. Alternatively, you can buy cheap, broken stuff online, refurbish them, and then sell them for a profit. Dismantling broken electronics and caching the salvageable parts feels satisfying. Having the right replacement part on hand; that’s the good stuff.

My only issue with the current build is that each item has a core anchor part, which serves as the base for everything else. I don’t know how to get rid of it, or if you even can. So, if I’ve stripped something of useable parts, this one piece sits on a box on the shelf indefinitely. I imagine that this will either be fixed in the release version or, more likely, I’m just missing how you’re supposed to do it.

Otherwise, it’s a joy. There are lots of small details, such as manually setting boxes on your abundant shelves or how the screws drop into a little container on your work area. Restory understands the mission. It knows that mundane flourishes like those count for a lot in a game like this.

NOT ENOUGH SOLDER FUMES

This is the sort of game where you’ll be completing the same task repeatedly, which won’t be to everyone’s taste. I was getting tired of seeing the guts of the PSP. To be fair, there are already a lot of items to disassemble and reassemble, and the final version promises a lot more. I’m hoping for an Atari Jaguar. And a Wonderswan.

I’m happy that Restory delivers exactly what I’m looking for. I love to tinker, and I don’t always have something on hand that needs repair (though, my Famicom Disk System is acting a bit hinky, I think it’s time for a new belt). It’s not as satisfying as starting up a previously dead Sega Game Gear or diagnosing and replacing the controller interface chip in a Colecovision, but it’s also cheaper and more accessible. I’m not entirely sure what the story part of Restory is going to be like, but I’m not sure that’s important. Both of the important things are already present in the demo: disassembly and reassembly.

The demo for Restory is available now (I think). The full release is planned for sometime in 2026.

This preview was conducted using a pre-release version of the public demo. It was provided by the publisher’s PR.