Happy Halloween Ghouls and Ghoulettes! When you think of Halloween you don’t see yourself spending time at the beach right? Or at a beach out of time…and space? Well, that’s how I spent my Halloween in Broken Pieces. I want to give thanks to Elseware Experience and Freedom Games for the reviewing opportunity.
Broken Pieces takes place on the seaside of France in 1993 where players take on the role of Elise, a woman searching for her missing fiance as the world seems to be outside of time and the village she’s in is devoid of life as an event took place resulting in the population going missing and supernatural threats stalk the streets.
Now onto the game itself! When it comes to the controls, Broken Pieces thankfully has a tutorial system but the more I played it, it became evident that the game is more suited for mouse and keyboard which makes some interactions and movements awkward.
The game’s soundtrack is missing but can be filled using a unique mechanic, an old cassette player that Elise has where she can listen to tapes of songs recorded by her fiance that can be found hidden in the world which I find interesting and creative. The audio can be a bit of an issue as it can be a bit too loud at times and will require you to turn it down.
The game’s graphics are OK as it is an indie game. I will say at times the game seems to glitch the camera and I’m stuck because I can’t see where I am, in the game you can control the fixed camera angles and go into first-person but if you interact with something, at least a couple of times for me, the camera angle gets stuck elsewhere!
When it comes to gameplay, though the camera angle mechanic makes looking around interesting, it also kind of hinders traveling in the game’s world. The puzzles you encounter are interesting and a bit frustrating whereas backtracking to find hints about them feels like a chore. Unfortunately, I did not get too far in the game because of glitches with the cameras forcing me to stop and start over, and the occasional freeze glitch after I read signs, sad to say that Broken Pieces is kind of broken itself, for Console at least.
Overall Broken Pieces is a unique mystery thriller but playing on a console feels off as it strikes me as it was really meant for PC. My rating for the game is mainly based on some of the glitches I’ve encountered that kind of made the game not fun to play, unfortunately, I have to give it a 5/10 but I hope post-launch there will be some patches that will allow me to be able to play the game unhindered. I am willing to come back to this game when and if there’s a patch and give it another look if you (the reader) are interested.
Broken Pieces is out now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S
