The story of Broken Pieces revolves around a woman, Elise, figuring out what mysterious events have occurred in her village, how they're connected to the vanishing of her life partner, Piérre, and her willingness to figure it all out, in attempts to, hopefully, once again be reunited with the one she's lost.
While there is a bit of backstory regarding Elise and Pierre, these are mostly fond memories of times gone; nothing that pertains to the mystery.
The "mystery", is "lovecraftian", a genre which i've rarely found that interesting, so i found the story of the game not that interesting.
Lovecraftian horror is a subgenre of horror fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible
It says horror but there's nothing I'd call horror about this game.
It says "best be played with a controller". With mouse and keyboard, i found myself struggling at times to get started climbing a set of stairs, or navigate in a specific direction. Nothing too bad, though, and only occurred a few times, but i don't think the controller might be better. I think the choice of cameras was the culprit.
The game is a third person with a fixed camera, with two angles you can switch between, that "help look around the environment and explore better". They auto-change location with your advances through an area. Needless to say, this camera type makes for some very awkward angles, and are not very good for examining thing in detail. Extreme close ups in interiors, and huge zoom outs in long, open areas.
There's also a second camera, in first person, served for the close-up examining of stuff. But, this camera halts the character's movement and is slow to switch to and from, so i found myself not using it, due to it's slow switching, and the story wasn't that interesting enough for me to want to examine thing up close, to immerse myself in this world.
Personally, i found the cameras a bit annoying, after a while. The constant switching between angles to see where I'm going gets disorienting, fast. Especially in some of the more labarinthy areas of the village. And the slow, character-stopping, first person camera just meant i gave up on appretiating the detailed village and visual clues.
There's quite a bit to read around town; plaques, restaurant names, objects to interact with that give you clues and a few objective-hinting papers to pick up; all with their short pieces of lore, which the character reads aloud and responds to.
Moving around the village's areas requires you to use gates, to travel between them. These gates need to be unlocked, with puzzles, or finding keys, or other methods to open them. Travelling between areas takes up time, and you have x amount of hours in the day to use, so you need to manage your time. You need to return home before dark, where you can sleep and move onto the next day. You don't need to, the game just increases the difficulty of combat, at night.
Personally, i never found myself running out of time and having to quickly "rush" home, as there is a lot of moving back and forward between areas and your home, so i found myself sleeping and moving onto the next day each time i passed by my house. There's absolutely no penalty to sleeping, which makes the time management a bit useless.
Regarding moving a lot from area to area, make sure you make use of your Walkman in-game (or IRL - they're still cool af!) because moving around the village can, at times become very dull. Even the developers tell you this:
I read, "not interesting enough of a story to keep you interested".
Not much going on with scavenging. A few lootable objects scattered around the world, which yield some unimportant collectibles, side-quest items and two or three types of items used to craft the single item there is to craft in the whole game; "good ammo". That's right, you can craft one item!
Oh, and your inventory is small so, if you're a hoarder like me, get ready to back-track even more, to go to your house and store those precious "useless" items you've found. And while at your house, just sleep, and get a new full day to explore. Gate time management is a joke to Elise!
Combat is very basic, with one single weapon - a gun - in your "arsenal", and one magic "attack" to help fight off the not-so-impressive enemies. No real upgrades, modifications, nothing. I think there is one upgrade for the gun, but it's accessed only by completing a side-quest, which i didn't bother with, as the combat never got difficult enough, and getting it implied even more back-tracking to previously visited locations to get it. Totally worthless, imo.
Regarding ammo, you can craft that one single item; the "good ammo", which is op af. In conjunction with the magic "attack", there's really no need to look that much for crafting materials for those, because the regular ammo, which you literally have an infinite amount of, does its job. It's actually a downside, picking up "good ammo" crafting parts, as they fill your tiny inventory, leaving you with no room for quest related items, and no choice but to discard them to make room or, again, backtrack, and go home and store them. And while you're there, why not sleep till next day? Again? No penalty.
Oh, and you can't craft the ammo yourself. No. Elise crafts ammo only when she sleeps!
There's a mode you can start the game on that has no combat at all; If you're feeling really, really, really mellow, go for it. Just keep that Walkman always on or you might die of boredom. The songs are quite good, so no complaint there, however.
Puzzles are the most interesting part of the game. For people looking for complicated puzzles, look elsewhere. This game's puzzles are not very challenging. I did, however, find them enjoyable because they can be figured out without reading hints; their solutions are visual, follow common sense, logic and deduction, which is great.
Unlike that one game that required me to find a cup to get some water, and the mug i had in my inventory wasn't a perfectly acceptable option...
The fact that i didn't get stuck on puzzles made enduring the next quasi-dull, necessary back-tracking bearable to look forward to, as well.
There's also a "feature" or two the character can activate/deactivate/perform at any time, that affects the world, which adds complexity to traversing the village and affects puzzles as well as combat. That was neat, as well.
Not bad. Some default shaders that makes me immediately go "made with Unreal", but some good looking locations and visuals, non-the-less.
Overall, it's just an OK game. Everything comes together coherently. But it feels too easy and dumbed down. But hey, if you want an easy, mellow game, Broken Pieces might just be the game for you!
There are definitely more interesting games to play that comes to mind, when thinking about what Broken Pieces does. Alan Wake, being leagues ahead and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture.
Thanks for reading!
