ReStory review – My new favourite sim

There’s one big problem with playing ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs from developer Mandragora: it will leave you wanting to tinker with every random piece of tech laying around your house. This electronics repair simulator manages to be both charming and realistic at the same time, and its focus on early 2000s tech means it scratches a nostalgic itch you didn’t even know you had.

Whether you’re taking apart a mobile phone or a retro games console, you’ll be fully immersed in the art of fixing and cleaning. ReStory manages to feel realistic as you take items apart, but it’s never so fiddly and detail-oriented that it becomes frustrating to play. Mandragora has managed to perfectly balance realism and entertainment, and honestly, taking apart pieces of technology has never been so fun.

The only real brand you’ll find here is Atari, but whether you’re disassembling a ‘Pokia’ phone, repairing a ‘Mony PMP’ or buying parts from a ‘Mapple Mypod’, everything you come across in ReStory is wonderfully familiar. After repairing a few Pokias, you’ll feel like you can pull out your old Nokia and know exactly how to take it apart and put it back together again.

Of course, there’s more to ReStory than the act of repairing items. You’ll need to deal with customers, many of whom have stories to tell you that you’ll undoubtedly get invested in. You’ll need to pay your bills, too, and you’ll need to keep on top of your emails to check for new jobs coming in. You’ll also need to browse the online marketplace to buy parts or other broken tech for you to use for your repairs.

There’s a solid sense of progression here, with the items you repair getting more intricate as you move forward. You’ll soon be sick of the sight of Pokia phones and Tamagotchi-style virtual pets, but it won’t be long until you have handheld game consoles, other brands of mobile phones, Walkmans and a whole lot more to work on. You can’t just instantly start repairing any old item, though. You’ll first need to buy a license, ensuring you’re picking up enough jobs every day to earn the money required.

You’ll be in charge of managing your own time, opening up your shop first thing in the morning and closing it whenever you like. You’re warned early on to close by midnight, but you don’t need to – I’ve kept working through the night many times. You’ll just need to wait until 8am (in game) for any deliveries to be made and any finished repairs to be picked up.

It’s a beautiful-looking game. Despite the items you work on looking realistic, the rest of the game sports a charming, cartoonish art style. While your workshop is fully three-dimensional, the customers who appear at your window are 2D anime-styled characters, lending ReStory an altogether unique and appealing vibe.

If games like PowerWash Simulator, House Flipper and so on are your vibe, I feel like ReStory offers a similar type of experience. The attention to detail when it comes to taking apart electronics is second to none, and while it is detail-oriented and perhaps a little repetitive at times, it scratches the itch that many sim games target but in a more charming, nostalgic way – and it does so with gusto.

Whether you’re coming across a replica of a piece of tech you totally forgot existed, or disassembling your favourite gaming system from your childhood, there’s something really special about ReStory, and I just can’t get enough.