Autumn is deepening. But while October is the season of ghosts and goblins, it is also the season of nostalgic melancholy. Released earlier this week, "Love - A Puzzle Box Filled With Stories" stimulates the nerves to ponder what might have been, thanks to a rather dreary method of production.

An experimental narrative puzzle box by developer Rocketship Park, Love is a shifting architectural diorama about relationships, regret, time travel, and the fantasy of knowing your neighbors as more than "people who receive misdirected packages."

Living in a constantly shifting apartment complex can be a nightmare, but the Rubix Cube row houses in "Love" make for a wonderful, tactile narrative diorama. Each floor has its own inhabitants, and every room has its own problems and relationships.

Importantly, there is a supernatural temporal barrier separating the past from the present. Rotating the tenants between the two determines whether the scene they are acting out is happening now or has happened before, and affects the other inhabitants of the building.

The trailer presents the game in a truly sappy, decade-old romance movie vein, but there seems to be something melancholy in Love's heart. In a press release earlier this year, co-founder Shane McCafferty explained that the game is less interested in romance and more in "the challenge of letting go of the past, and the warm tinge of sadness that comes with it"

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The mood seems to be quite on target, as this fall is often more depressing than other seasons; Love - A Puzzle Box Filled With Stories is available on Steam for $17.99/€15.11/£13.94.