Is This Seat Taken? Is A Great Puzzle Game… If You Aren’t Planning A Wedding

By Willa Rowe | August 25, 2025 | 11:30am

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Is This Seat Taken? Is A Great Puzzle Game… If You Aren’t Planning A Wedding

By all reasonable standards, Is This Seat Taken? succeeds at what it’s trying to do. The logic puzzler from developer Poti Poti Studios tasks players with creating the perfect seating chart in any given scenario, a seating chart in which everyone’s unique needs are met. It’s a clever social simulator that a lot of people have connected to, as the game does touch on the way social situations can induce anxiety in people who aren’t sure where they fit in. As I play Is This Seat Taken?, however, I find myself getting progressively pissed off at the exceedingly annoying demands of patrons. This is by no means a reasonable thing to feel, but forgive me; I’ve been planning a wedding.

I didn’t start Is This Seat Taken? with the intention of having my own wedding anxiety flare up. Maybe that was foolish considering at the time of writing this piece the countdown to my big day is in the single digits and things are still not fully ready. But how was I supposed to know that at the end of Is This Seat Taken?’s first collection of levels a bonus puzzle set at a wedding would send me into a fit of rage?

It makes sense that a game about figuring out where exactly a large group of people would sit would include a wedding level, though it is interesting that it still exists from the perspective of the guests (or, rather, a godlike player trying to adhere to the whims of guests). As in the rest of Is This Seat Taken? every person has a check list of things they need in a seat. At the wedding there are requests such as wanting to be near the lucky couple, wanting to be as far away from a specific person as possible, needing to be next to the fish, and wanting to sit away from anybody dressed too elegantly. But did anybody ever think that maybe the best thing to do on a wedding day, a day not about the guests, was to just get over their own issues and make life easy for the couple?

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Is This Seat Taken?

Listen, planning a wedding is stressful as all hell. Planning a seating chart happens to be a big part of that. You get a collection of people together, many of whom don’t know each other or have their own relationships that come with baggage, and must figure out how to do exactly what Is This Seat Taken? Is asking the player to do in every level—make everyone happy. It’s a nearly impossible task. Not to mention it gets even worse when guests start feeling like they have the right to make demands. What do you mean you are adding a plus one two weeks before the wedding even though the final guest count was set a month ago?

This is why the demands of Is This Seat Taken?’s characters particularly frustrate me. Have they ever considered maybe they are selfish? Have they ever considered that maybe the player is under a lot of stress right now? Why are they being judgy about the person who dressed in a top hat for the wedding, did they even consider that the dress code said formal and that maybe YOU are the one underdressed, and thus, by extension, the real asshole? Also as for wanting to sit by the fish, you were supposed to mark down your entree of choice on your RSVP that you forget to respond to for weeks.

I’m reminded of the singular wedding I have attended in the past that made the grave mistake of letting guests choose their seats on the day of the ceremony. It was a disaster and made for a circus of people being frozen by the very social anxiety Is This Seat Taken? depicts. The more that is left for guests to decide on the day, the more chance that something will go wrong. This is why you simply need a seating chart. Which, as I’m saying this, makes me wonder… Why isn’t there a seating chart? Oh my god did the couple just forget? You know, they are under a lot of stress actually. I guess this is why people hire wedding planners.

Of course this level is just one small section of Is This Seat Taken?’s many wonderfully crafted logic puzzles. At any other time in my life this is exactly the type of game I would want to play, as its charming aesthetics make it even easier to sink time into. It also ramps up the challenge at a great pace before concluding in a short but enjoyable five or six hours. Which, if you even cared, is substantially less time then it took to actually complete the seating chart for my wedding. Behind its clever design, Is This Seat Taken? It is a game meant to remind us that everyone has some sort of anxiety about where they fit in. What I’m saying is that you probably have more in common with those around you than you realize, so if you are ever at a wedding just sit down in the nearest goddamn seat.

Willa Rowe is a queer games critic based in New York City whose writing has been featured in Digital Trends, Kotaku, Inverse, and more. She also hosts the Girl Mode podcast. When she isn’t talking games she can be found on Bluesky rooting for the New York Mets.