- November 17, 2025
- Blue Backpack
The Berlin Apartment
The Berlin Apartment is certainly a nice tribute to the history of the titular city. With gorgeous scenery evolving through time that tells the tales of its residents, the apartment is a delight to explore. However, a more intriguing main narrative or engaging gameplay mechanics would’ve been a massive boon for the game. A gorgeous art style and heartwarming sentimentality make The Berlin Apartment an enjoyable experience, albeit one that struggles to stand against the genre’s best.
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The Berlin Apartment is a single player casual simulation game with drama, mystery and historical themes. It was developed by Blue Backpack and was released on November 17, 2025. It received mostly positive reviews from critics and overwhelmingly positive reviews from players.
STORY: Dilara joins her father Malik, a handyman tasked with refurbishing an old apartment in the city of Berlin, Germany. In the course of their extensive renovation work, Dilara digs deeper and deeper into the history of the apartment. Relics from past times turn out to be silent witnesses and former companions of the apartment's previous inhabitants. With each new find, Malik tells his daughter…
- The Berlin Apartment offers a heartfelt, moving narrative experience with beautifully crafted stories that span over a century of Berlin's history, creating strong emotional connections with its characters.
- The game's unique concept of exploring different eras through the same apartment, combined with a charming painterly art style and subtle, fitting sound design, enhances immersion and atmosphere.
- It successfully handles difficult historical themes with sensitivity and empathy, transforming light gameplay elements into meaningful, sometimes powerful moments that engage players beyond typical narrative games.
- The game is relatively short in length with a minimalistic gameplay experience, making it feel less substantial for its price and possibly better suited for play during sales or for those specifically seeking story-driven content.
- Technical issues such as bugs, clipping problems, inconsistent or underwhelming English voice acting, and occasional UI annoyances can disrupt immersion and frustrate players.
- Some chapters, notably the 1960s segment, are criticized for breaking the overall tone and focus of the game, with frustrating gameplay mechanics and a storyline that many players found less engaging or out of place.
- story77 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
The story is praised for its thoughtful, evocative portrayal of Berlin's history through intimate, well-written vignettes that blend serious themes with a charming, sometimes childlike tone. While some chapters—especially the 1967 segment—feel less connected to the setting and less polished, the overall narrative is heartfelt, emotionally resonant, and enhanced by strong characters and atmosphere. Players appreciate its subtle, respectful storytelling, though its short length and occasional gameplay friction slightly hinder the experience.
“But when the Berlin apartment hits the high point of this storytelling in the 1945 chapter, it really hits hard.”
“It's interesting to see how the apartment and its boundaries change over time - expanding and contracting based on historical/economic circumstances, filling with plants or shrapnel or the fittings of an imagined spaceship, having its layers stripped away in the frame story in 2020 - and the way that politics and overall zeitgeist shapes the lives of individual people.”
“Having said that, I commend the game for tackling difficult subjects in a sensitive way, as the 1933 story is very close to my heart - and felt that Josef was a three-dimensional character with charm and thoughts appropriate to the era, as opposed to one written with a modern perspective.”
“It is especially egregious in the 1967 story where they deal with a book being censored.”
“But...while touching, there wasn't as much 'to' each segment, and what seemed like the longest (1967) seems to have the very least to do with the 'story' of the location, or with the time it was set in (the censorship board could easily have been a nagging publisher, in a sense the timelessness 'works' but we did already have a story about somebody being miserable in the GDR... it having taken place there seems entirely incidental besides a coincidental connection with her father and a previous tenant, and it genuinely made me feel like they were satisfying some requirement for their funding from the government space agency... if the irony is intentional I take everything negative back.”
“I felt that the story set in the sixties took me out of the apartment which has been the focus of the whole game - and as well as this, the mechanics were somewhat frustrating, leading to a section that played longer than the other chapters.”
The Berlin Apartment Review – A city of wonder
The Berlin Apartment is certainly a nice tribute to the history of the titular city. With gorgeous scenery evolving through time that tells the tales of its residents, the apartment is a delight to explore. However, a more intriguing main narrative or engaging gameplay mechanics would’ve been a massive boon for the game. A gorgeous art style and heartwarming sentimentality make The Berlin Apartment an enjoyable experience, albeit one that struggles to stand against the genre’s best.
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Frequently Asked Questions
The Berlin Apartment is a casual simulation game with drama, mystery and historical themes.
The Berlin Apartment is available on Xbox Series X|S, PC, PlayStation 5, Steam Deck and others.
The Berlin Apartment was released on November 17, 2025.
The Berlin Apartment was developed by Blue Backpack.
The Berlin Apartment has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from players. Most players liked this game for its story but disliked it for its stability.
The Berlin Apartment is a single player game.
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