Change can be hard. At the end of a relationship, it can be difficult to look ahead and easy to look back. "Maquette," a new puzzle game from developer Graceful Decay and publisher Annapurna Interactive, offers an earnest look at a crumbling romantic bond between two protagonists whose relationship fluctuates between highs and lows, just like the game as a whole. "Maquette" is best described as a recursive puzzle game. The world you navigate has a smaller replica within it, and a larger one outside of it. And if you look deep into the horizon, you can see the edges of a bigger, completely identical world, conveying that this place repeats itself into infinity. It's a difficult concept to explain, and much easier to understand in action. The concept makes for ingenious, though at times frustrating, level design and puzzles, with a love story that progresses through narration and text. You spend the majority of the game in a single but shifting environment. Doors and paths open up to locations that mirror the story; in one instance, you enter what the protagonists describe as their "dream home." This thematic connection gives the impression that you're walking through memories or lived experiences, which makes the game's intimate story all the more resonant. Few video games are able to navigate romance with grace, but we're slowly seeing better and more realistic portrayals. The interactive graphic novel "Florence," also published by Annapurna Interactive, is a great example of how the mundanity of a relationship can be morphed into a compelling experience. "Maquette" is similarly poignant in how real it feels with its story of day-to-day humdrum, where even the briefest of phrases can signal a growing disconnect between two partners. Playing with your heart: Eight games that get love right In the center of the world stands a magnificent dome with a diorama — an exact replica of the world you're walking through. The diorama can be used to manipulate the world directly, as well as manipulate objects in your inventory. For example, a key might not open a door until you shrink it, which is accomplished by placing it down somewhere, then picking up its smaller copy that spawns within the diorama. The opposite can be done, too: Increasing the key's size can make it the perfect length for a makeshift bridge to get across a gap.