Review: Bob Came in Pieces
Bob came in pieces, and it's your rocketing, pushing, pulling, breaking, exploring, and building that will get him together again. You won't need any horses or king's men; just creative puzzle solving in a cute, cartoony world. It's nothing too difficult, really, but I enjoyed my trip through the dozen or so levels of interesting challenges and environments. The Swedish creators, Ludosity, succeeded in making a game that is unique and engaging, with a splash of humor, as well!
The story's not too complicated in this game. A nice little alien named Bob is on his commute to work when he's hit by some space debris and crash-lands on a mysterious planet. Oh yes, in pieces. The art and atmosphere of this game reminds me a lot of Pikmin, actually. The worlds are neatly detailed and give you a sense that you're a small fry compared to most of what's around you. Your job is to get Bob out of this place by collecting parts to your ship to use in completing puzzles and eventually reaching the end of each level. You'll not only collect more parts, but new and different ones, too. T- and Y-modules, rocket boosters of various power, and pull beams are some of the tools you'll use to get through.
The main appeal of this game is that in order to solve puzzles, you must add and change parts of your ship to suit the task at hand. The builder system is quite good and intuitive. A little drag-and-drop never hurt anyone, right? For your most commonly-used ships, you'll want to save their configurations to recall later. The names of mine probably explain themselves: Move, Pull, Big Pull, Push, and Small, for example. Mundane, I know, but I knew what I needed.
But before making your ship, you have to understand the puzzle. Most were relatively clear-cut in how to succeed, but how to approach it with the pieces you have depends on what your best idea is. Sometimes you just need to reach a weird hole in a wall, other times you lift something over a hill, and still others you just need speed and force to break stuff. I personally enjoyed the ones that weren't so obvious, as well, and required some experimentation to figure out.
The physics of the ship were very well-done! Every module or part had a weight that was taken into account when moving around and balancing the rockets' relative propulsion. So when you were lopsided to grab a box from the side, you could try to fudge around to get it, blasting off in weird directions, or build counterweights. Since the rockets are the only method of moving, it can come close to frustrating when you can't get proper control. Once you get the heavy-duty ones, though, you can muscle your way through most of these annoyances.
I encountered a few bugs. Sometimes I'd just get trapped in a corner, but similarly if your ship design, say, doesn't let you move to the right, you're going to get stuck eventually. The catch-all for this is an instant-respawn at designated checkpoints/build stations, so I can't really complain. The objects in the world itself, though, would sometimes not act properly and make me restart a level, but that was uncommon. Also, while this isn't a bug, it still annoys me that I had to alternate between the mouse for the ship builder and the keyboard for gameplay. Often I'd just need more key presses than my keyboard could register to get the job done, too.
The game doesn't really boast much replay value to me. There are tons of achievements for this indie game, based on beating each level, collecting parts, and completing time trials. Some of these levels took me half an hour to beat, and they want me to finish in under two minutes? I watched some examples of speed runs; they're not impossible, but I enjoyed taking my time conquering the puzzles rather than racing through. What little I did after beating the game involved looking for those hidden spots with the final parts and messing around a bit with the ship builder. I have to ask, though: what's the purpose of having all these parts when I don't really have more to do with them? I don't really have anywhere to experiment or use my creations beyond the existing levels.
I enjoyed this game, but I have a feeling that it might be better suited for a parent looking for a neat game for her kid to learn something from. It wouldn't have surprised me if this was on the Wii instead, even. Some of the puzzles were quite unique, and almost all were fun to do. For the sheer number of levels and puzzles in the game, I'd say it's worth the $7.50 I paid for it while it was on sale on Steam. If it's something that sounds interesting to you, give the demo a try and see for yourself!
MSRP: $10
CASRP: $7.50
CouchAthletics.com doesn't rate games with stars or percentage; we tell you what the game is worth to us. We paid for the game just like you will, or won't. We're telling you what we paid, and how much we feel the game is worth.
