Two Fedoras

“I work in a call center just across the galaxy. Some may say its boring, but I love it!” I was on board with Bob of Bob Came in Pieces being a squid; in fact, I’ve been conditioned to be quite accepting of such things, but someone enjoying call center life? I apologize gentlemen, but I’m afraid you’ve lost me. With our sense of realism already having been shattered, let us trudge onward into the lunar lander puzzle game chimera that is Ludosity’s Bob Came in Pieces.

Plot

You take on the role of Bob, a call center employee with a hint of snark who’s somehow managed to get lost on his way across the galaxy. Marooned on an alien world inexplicably covered in puzzles, Bob must now gather the ship parts needed for the journey back into space.

Gameplay

Bob Came in Pieces is as much a physics game as it is a puzzle game. It may well be an exaggeration to describe it as being equal parts of each, because in many cases the puzzles act only to show the physics at work.

Bob’s ship is a modular craft that utilizes rocket thrusters to maneuver much like a lunar lander.  On each of the game’s fourteen levels there are five ship pieces, each of which can be attached and configured to the ship to fulfill specific puzzle solving objectives. As previously mentioned the game is particularly physics heavy so each piece that is added to the ship has a weight asigned to it. The added weight will affect the ships balance and maneuvering capabilities, requiring one to be conscientious and strategic about their ships configuration.

The puzzles themselves are quite simple, they often involve simple tasks like dropping a weight on a lever or rolling a ball down a slope. I would go so far as to say that they were a bit underwhelming and I largely attribute this to the difficulty associated with controlling the ship, which seems to be the source of a lot of the games challenge. The ship’s configuration adds a little depth to the puzzles, but in essence we are talking about affixing a pole onto your ship to poke through a hole and accomplish some action. It’s not rocket science, despite the inclusion of actual rockets.

There are a few little bugs in the game. You’ll sometiems find yourself stuck, wedged between objects or terrain and forced to reset. Fortunately this is made simple by hitting “Enter” and warping to the closest ship configuration pad and having the last few actions you had taken reverted. There are also a couple little physics oddities, for example carrying a load up until you hit the ceiling seems to cause you to stick there until you release your cargo. Fortunately, none of these issues are particularly game breaking.

In terms of gameplay and mechanics Bob Came in Pieces is structurally sound but as a game it’s far from flawless. There are engagement issues in that you find yourself lacking incentive to go find all the pieces or replay the levels. The issue seems largely attributable to the seemingly shallow explorable depths of the lunar lander mechanics. In many ways Ludosity was right to not create more challenging puzzles as they could have easily lead to intolerable levels of frustration. For instance, there is a particular part of the game in which you need to rapidly accelerate into a very small block, bouncing it into an adjacent ice block in hopes of shattering it. This process is exceptionally aggravating and really highlights the imprecision associated with the controls.

To alleviate this particular short coming, I would have liked to have seen some more exploration of the Rube Goldberg style mechanisms. A cascade of consequences resulting from my individually unimpressive actions could have dramatically enhanced the satisfaction levels of those actions.

Audio Visual

Bob Came in Pieces features stylistically simple visuals with 3D models in a 2D side scrolling world. The environments are bright and colorful with an extensive use of primary colors that gives the game a light and warm feeling. Throughout the fourteen levels there are a handful of different environmental themes, warm green forests, frigid ice covered caverns, and industrialized volcanic mountains, each of which is filled with flavor objects to give them sense of life. In addition, the game makes good use of particle effects and dynamic lighting to further enhance the graphical aesthetic.

The sound and music of the game are adequate and, given the relaxed nature of the gameplay, are appropriately understated.

Summary

Bob Came in Pieces is a decent offering. It is, however, a pretty tough sale at $9.99 as a result of its less than engaging gameplay and mostly unfulfilling experience. The game does pick up some bonus points for looking quite nice, and having a unique combination of puzzle and lunar lander game mechanics. Do make note, the game has been known to go on sale, and if it presents itself at a sub $5 price tag it becomes substantially easier to recommend. There is a Bob Came in Pieces demo available and if you like it you can acquire it from Steam, Gamersgate, Impulse, D2D, or Ludosity themselves.