Fixing the past: how Assemble with Care turns objects into memories

Have you ever held onto something long after it stopped working? A watch from a grandparent, an old cassette deck, a childhood toy—things that don’t just take up space but hold pieces of your past. Assemble with Care, from ustwo games, is about that. You play Maria, a travelling repairwoman who lands in Bellariva, a town where people’s broken possessions say more about them than their words ever could.

But this game isn’t just about fixing things. It’s about piecing together people’s lives, memories, and relationships—one careful repair at a time.

Maria doesn’t just mend radios and cameras; she listens. Each repair tells a story, and each story is stitched into the fabric of someone’s life. You unscrew, rewire, and realign, but you’re also learning—about a mother and daughter trying to reconnect, a sibling rivalry stretched thin over the years, an old man reliving the past through a crackling tape recording.

It’s simple, but it hits home. The objects in Assemble with Care aren’t just objects. They’re emotional anchors, pulling their owners back to forgotten places and the people they once were. We tend to think of memories as things we keep in our heads. But sometimes, they live in the things we hold onto. A concert ticket tucked into an old book, a scarf that still smells like someone you miss, a phone full of photos you’ll never delete.

Objects in Assemble with Care work the same way. They store people’s histories, regrets, and hopes. A broken slide projector isn’t just broken—it’s the last link between a father and daughter who’ve drifted apart. A damaged watch isn’t just missing a cog—it’s a brother’s guilt ticking away, unspoken. Fixing these things isn’t just about function; it’s about meaning.

Here’s something to think about: why is fixing things so satisfying? It’s not just about getting something to work again. It’s the process. The attention. The feeling that, with enough care, anything can be made whole.

That’s the game’s big metaphor. The repairs you make in Bellariva aren’t just mechanical; they’re emotional. A father and daughter barely talk—until you fix their slide projector, and they watch old photos together. Two sisters are worlds apart—until a childhood music box plays its tune again, bridging the silence.

It makes you wonder: how many things in real life could be fixed, if we just took the time?

Philosophers call this the extended mind thesis—the idea that our minds don’t stop at our skulls but spill out into the world through the objects we use. Ever felt lost without your phone? Reluctant to throw away an old notebook, even if you never use it? That’s the extended mind in action. The things we own aren’t just tools; they’re part of how we think, remember, exist.

Assemble with Care plays with this idea beautifully. The people of Bellariva aren’t just losing objects when things break—they’re losing pieces of themselves. And Maria isn’t just fixing their stuff; she’s helping them think, feel, and remember again.

Some people hoard, some people throw everything away—but we all have something we can’t let go of. Maybe it’s nostalgia. Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe it’s just the quiet belief that an object, even a broken one, still holds something we’re not ready to lose. The game gets that. It doesn’t tell you to move on, to declutter, to “let go.” It understands why people cling to things. And, in a world where tech is disposable and memories are stored in clouds instead of physical things, that feels rare.

But there’s something else at play here—Assemble with Care quietly pushes back against throwaway culture. In a world where things are designed to break, where the cost of repair often outweighs the cost of replacement, the game slows you down. It asks you to care, to pay attention, to believe that something broken still has value.

It’s a quiet protest against planned obsolescence, against the idea that things (and maybe even people) are disposable.

One of the most powerful things about Assemble with Care is what it doesn’t say. There’s no heavy-handed message, no lecture about appreciating what we have. The game just gives you these quiet, delicate moments—turning a screw, rewinding a tape, watching a character’s face soften as something broken comes back to life. It’s a reminder that, sometimes, the things we own own us back. And that’s not always a bad thing.

Assemble with Care isn’t flashy. It’s not loud. But it does something special—it makes you feel the weight of objects, of memories, of connections. It understands that sometimes, fixing something small can mean everything. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll make you look at the things you’ve kept—and the things you’ve lost—a little differently.