Broken pieces is an adventure puzzle game reminiscent of retro classics such as resident evil and silent hill, however this game is set in an abandoned town and has the option to turn off combat entirely in order to focus on the puzzles which were one of the main selling points of the game claiming to have unique and clever puzzles as solutions as opposed to the standard find key etc puzzles of old.
I do feel I have to preface this review with a note that although there are issues I will address in this review of my playthrough the developers have and are implementing fixes to problems which arose and some have already been addressed.
First and foremost I do want to address the combat as this will be important when deciding how to play as it does ask you at the beginning if you want to turn off combat to just enjoy the storyline and puzzles, obviously I chose to keep the combat on however this did lead to most of the disappointment with the game and not only because the mechanic to actually hit the enemies was so slow to lock on that you miss most of the shots, but also there are a few other issues I have to address.
Combat really didn’t feel too much of a threat as even though you could miss the majority of shots the enemies would charge at you and if they touched you the medallion which protects you would often just delete the enemy winning the combat and rarely would you ever find yourself in a situation where your health would ever be at risk, you even gain the ability to hold a charge to delete all the enemies on the screen at a time and if you didn’t use this there’s a button to repel them back to the other side of the screen too so combat got a little stale
What really didn’t help with the combat is that there is literally only one type of enemy throughout the entire game, they do try to do something by at one point giving them a shield bubble which makes them take extra hits but that’s it other than throwing more enemies and more waves of enemies you will never encounter anything else
Technically there is a point where something will fly overhead dumping hazards into the combat field but other than this there is nothing else to the combat, and all it does is lock you out of progressing to the extent that the game would be far more fun without enemies, and worse than this there isn’t even a final boss as while the flying thing is technically a boss of a secret area the actual game itself doesn’t have a final boss or a final showdown and ends so disappointingly in simply pressing yes on a computer screen and leaving to experience one of the shortest and most abrupt and disappointing endings ever.
As a result of this ending being so disappointing the devs have added an audio tape to “explain” the situation during the end credits which I have not heard but have seen in the patch notes so this may go some way to improve the ending but it’s still a pretty disappointing way to finish the game, not even having a significant strong and challenging final puzzle because anything would have been more satisfying than the game suddenly ending and saying hey but it’s suggesting a sequel when we get what’s going on without spoilers it was just abrupt and disappointing.
One last negative I have to say on the ending situation is because there are essentially 3 questlines with the 3 boards in the basement, and while I went out of my way to find the secret teleportation orbs which do explain a lot to the story there is at present no alternative endings either which means there is nothing but the abrupt bad ending regardless of what you do and how far you go out of your way to solve the mysteries and discover the truth of the situation.
I did see in the end credits that there were originally designs for at least 2 alternative enemies which would have been huge for the combat in the game but I can guess that these had severe game breaking bugs that they were abandoned and there’s the chance that one may have even been an intended final boss of some kind so it is a pity that these were abandoned and hopefully it wasn’t in shifting these enemies that the combat was made so bad to excuse having just a single variety of enemy.
With regards to the puzzles which was the main selling feature for me on the game I did appreciate the way they went about being unique with the puzzles so it wasn’t simply a matter of get key item to use to unlock area, and while there were keys at times these often required a little ingenuity to gather and the game really didn’t hold your hand remotely in helping to get these you simply had to work out for yourself ways to use items you had or your powers to solve the situation in order to obtain the keys.
One puzzle in particular did need some assistance however and that was figuring out the wiring situation as it was not made clear how to figure this out and while I did stumble through a couple using ingenuity I did ultimately have to look up the correct way to do it, and the developers have since added a sign to point people quite literally in the right direction to figuring it out so this is good as many people would quite literally get progress locked at this point and give up.
Another thing I personally would have liked was if there was a map system as games like these always have a map and they’re pretty much a requirement to be able to see where you’ve been and where you need to explore still, without this I was feeling quite lost at times and just as though I was wondering around aimlessly just trying to find what I could do to progress rather than seeming to have any real goal after the lighthouse, while it said to go to the beach I didn’t feel I had any direction on where I should be going or why after that point and just aimlessly wandered around until I stumbled upon the requirements for the end of the game.
While I did find the combat utterly frustrating as I have said the developers did put an option to turn it off and I highly suggest that you disable the combat entirely because you will have a far more enjoyable time with the game, and while there are things that need polish the developers are doing so and addressing the issues and I believe they may even be adding alternative endings so there is the possibility that everything I have raised does get addressed by the time you read this.
I did enjoy the variety of the puzzle styles and the ingenuity they put into those where you had to often find creative solutions to situations in order to progress and they did add alternative powers you discover later which add to the puzzling elements and these were good and the storyline itself is interesting even if you can stumble across everything in completely the wrong order.
For me personally though I really do believe a strong ending puzzle would be required even if there is no end boss this would be a great substitution, as dialing into radio stations then pressing a button is not a satisfying way to end and nor is the very abrupt and short end sequence, which as stated they have added an audio tape to the ending so there is more to it now but it really does need to end strong on a strong final boss puzzle that would have to use all of your powers and things you’ve learnt and maybe a little extra creativity in my opinion if I was designing it.
So while there are issues many are being addressed and others have already been solved and you can quite literally disable the combat which does not add anything to the game other than being an expected element and is pretty frustrating (and sometimes breaks the game with framerate and bugs) so disable it when asked and play through just the adventure and you’ll have a far more enjoyable time, and if you judge it by the puzzles and storyline alone the game is much better, I just really do want there to be alternative endings as a reward for solving everything finding all the secret worlds and for the existing ending to be less abrupt and have a nice strong ending puzzle if it had those it would feel complete in my books.
You really should check it out for yourself it’s the only way to really know if the game is for you, and perhaps there are many things changed by the time you play so who knows what might be different to the review at this time.
