Please Don’t Touch Anything review for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One

On the surface, Please Don?t Touch Anything looks like it should be pretty limited in terms of gameplay. The game begins, and you find yourself sitting in front of a table with a single red button, and a large screen showing a city. While you can turn around and see the rest of the (cramped, dingy) room in which you find yourself, you can?t move or explore with your surroundings, and you?re extremely limited in what you can interact with. And to top it all off, you finish the first two levels by a) following the title?s request and not touching anything, and b) touching something and setting off the apocalypse, which makes you wonder just how much there could possibly be to do in this game.

Then the third level happens, and you realize just how much lies beneath the surface.

See, the more you press the red button, the more you discover that the table in front of you is hiding all kinds of crazy secrets. There are hidden buttons to press, drawers to open, panels to unscrew (and, on a related note, a screwdriver to find) — the number of gadgets hidden inside the table makes for all kinds of fascinating discoveries.

Not only that, while you may not be able to interact with the rest of the room, it still holds all kinds of crazy secrets. Numbers and sequences are hidden all over the place, and figuring out where they all are and what they all do is guaranteed to put your puzzle-solving skills to the test.

Even if you?re a puzzle-solving pro, however, be aware that you?re going to spend a lot of time trying things out here. Please Don?t Touch Anything?s internal logic can be pretty inscrutable at times, and there are plenty of moments where you?ll be awfully tempted to search out some hints and walkthroughs online (and plenty of moments where those walkthroughs and hints are probably the only way most of us will be able to figure out what to do next).

That said, the pay-off is well worth the hassle, as you quickly discover that bombs going off are the least of your worries. I don?t want to spoil any of the endings here, since they?re such a delight to discover, but I will say that any game that works in a solid 2001: A Space Odyssey reference is a game worth checking out, as far as I?m concerned.

Again, Please Don?t Touch Anything is a challenge. But it?s a challenge worth taking, and it?s proof that just because a game?s scope seems limited, appearances can be very deceiving.

ForwardXP provided us with a Please Don?t Touch Anything Switch code for review purposes.