A Little to the Left is a casual logic-puzzle game with a cozy mystery theme. It tasks the player with organizing, sorting and stacking various objects that a cat has chaotically messed up around a house.
The player starts the game by moving a book a little to the left of the backdrop using an on-screen hand that replaces the cursor. Once they complete this task, they must select the book twice to move on to the first of the many household objects.
The game doesn't follow any progressive pattern when presenting the player with tasks. The player might need to level out a tilted picture frame, move colored pencils into their correct positions on a white piece of paper, twist pantry cans to make all labels face forward, or organize a stack of papers by size or storage containers by the amount of food or liquid in each container.
A Little to the Left is an extremely difficult game that requires out-of-the-box thinking. It doesn't provide the player with any hints. As a result, they might spend a long time just trying to understand what the game wants them to do with specific objects. For example, they might need to determine if they're supposed to stack sticky notes by color or arrange the notes into groups on a surface.
If the player becomes frustrated, they can pause the game at any time.