You Can Sort It! Review – Yes We Can… Sort Of

Ready for a Sunday afternoon sort out? You can shove your reorganising of your Wii collection into A-Z from left to right, or PS2 games in some abstract order that cross-references your socks – Indovers Studio wants you to sort soda cans in You Can Sort It!

You can, you know, and the game is loaded up with ‘can’ puns, and I’m willing to pull the trigger. From the same meticulous mind as VHS World ‘89, some imbecile (or is it an Act of God?) has scattered 5,760 cans across a prison-like stock room with empty shelves and dull signage.

A prison, you say? Yes. Unlike the shopfront from before, there are no doors, tills or any form of civilisation. This is purgatory for all that Pepsi you drank. You may as well keep yourself busy and put everything back where it should be.

There’ll be some comparisons to VHS World ‘89 as it follows the same format, skill tree and… erm, vibe. Sections are labelled by flavours, such as lime, vanilla, cherry and so on. Cans can be placed anywhere under the signage, in brand order.

Yes, We Can!

You Can Sort It! has 20 brands per flavour, with 12 units a piece! Orange, for example, has PixelPop, Tiki Splash, BAM! Soda, FizzKid, Harvest & Co. and much more as options. Hop on over to mint or vanilla, and there’ll be the same prefixes, each with a bespoke design.

The play area is no-frills, but the art on the cans is pretty good and something you’d expect to see in a shop. The signage above the shelves? Barebones, a face only a mother could love. Also, to save writing a new paragraph, the music is upbeat supermarket stuff to keep you dancing.

So, as you start picking up what seems like an endless supply of cans, the Soda Clerk Skills menu allows for extras such as auto-stacking what’s in your hands, filling your mitts with cans that match whatever it is you’re currently holding, jump(!), and movement speed.

Carrying more in You Can Sort It! is probably one of the key skills to unlock, and it’s the most expensive. At the start, you can manage 5 cans at a time, which eventually increases to 15. Paired with auto-sheve and a copy finder that highlights matching cans, there is a method to the madness.

A Can-Do Attitude

One might think that these automated controls spoil the experience and let you steamroll through it. Perhaps, but it doesn’t mean the game can be speedrun, as each skill has a cooldown, and even when maxed out, it’ll take a little while to get through everything.

And that’s essentially all you have to do in You Can Sort It!. There are no timers, health bars, or staff micromanaging you and saying to stack in their preferred place. If you do want some company, the game can be played in co-op, which will make things a little livelier.

Once you’ve stacked everything in You Can Sort It!, that’s it. No fanfare, no rescue team to free you from this space. Achievements are granted for buying skills and whatnot. For the die-hards, you can try putting away all 5,760 cans without unlocking a single skill. Good luck with that one.

Will you come back to it? I don’t know. I haven’t returned to VHS World ‘89, but I liked it. It took around 4 hours straight to complete You Can Sort It!, and my newly developed carpal tunnel never questioned it. If the dev releases another title like this in the future, I most certainly would play it.