There seems to have been a lot of indie games coming out in the past couple of years, presumably spurred on by the big publishers starting to pay attention to the development talent that’s lying just beneath the surface. Finding a gem amongst all of the rubbish can quite often be a daunting task. With smaller studios, it’s often quite difficult to really polish a game or capture a mood due to the sheer dedication and manpower it needs to put together a completed product – which is why when a charming, simple and fun game comes along you really have to jump on it, and that’s exactly what you get with Bob Came In Pieces.
Developed by Sweden’s own Ludosity Interactive, Bob Came In Pieces weaves a melancholy yarn about a simple alien, working in a call centre (You get to wear your own clothes and talk all day, who wouldn’t love it? Right?). One day, on his way to work, he gets struck by a meteor and crash-lands on a mysterious planet, losing his Hyperdrive 2000 in the process. Strangely, it seems that the planets inhabitants have decided that travel should be an obnoxiously difficult task, littering the trail with puzzles that are often quite complex. Although that does start to make me wonder, when someone solves one, if some kind of alien security guard puts it all back together again? It makes a good premise for an indie game. Assuming your subject happens to have a customisable spaceship to hand.
And that’s where our intrepid hero has a stroke of luck. Now stranded, Bob has the perfect craft for travelling the planet – which is exactly what he’ll need in order to find his missing ship parts, and his way back home. The parts he will collect aren’t just cosmetic either – they all affect how your ship handles, or how it deals with the obstacles you’ll tackle. For instance, you could put a pull beam and boosters on the bottom, to lift a crate up into the air. Or, you could pick up a rock, roll it down a passage to push a block, which in turn pivots another block, clearing your path. Think of it like an intergalactic Rube Goldberg machine. You know, in that one awesome Honda advert? There are drawbacks, however, as these additions will weigh your ship down, limiting your speed and meaning you’ll have to really think about the situation before you start assembling. This is all fairly straightforward at the beginning, as it tends to be a case of ‘find out how to do this, do it, and that path opens up’ – but towards the end, however, things start to heat up; solving more complex puzzles, avoiding obstacles and holding on tight to your sanity, whilst using all the techniques you have learned to get through unscathed.
The puzzles, which are primarily physics based, will require a bit of thought and a completely different ship build to solve each time – and these builds can vary quite a bit, depending on how you want to deal with the situation; allowing you to really put your signature on every solution you come across. There’s plenty of room for you to make really wacky builds, as you get quite a lot of each basic component. The only issue I really had, was that the individual puzzle sections tended to be very short at start of the game, which meant I was spending half my time in the ship assembly screen. After a while, it can get a little tedious as I often found myself spending 10 minutes trying to solve a puzzle with an incompatible ship, just to avoid making a new one. Though that probably says a lot more about me than it does the game. However, I was also quite frustrated by the physics themselves. Sometimes they could make a seemingly simple puzzle far more difficult than it really should have been, though the upside to this is that you get an immense sense of achievement when you actually solve one of these puzzles. As if you’ve beaten the system or something.
At this point I think it right to mention another aspect of the game – the design. The introduction movie has an art style that was, frankly, not to my taste. To me it looked dull, but was more than forgiven when I got into the game, as altogether, it just looks really fun. Bright colours, well constructed levels and the ship itself all add to the ‘mood’ I mentioned earlier, something that many indie games lack. This mood carries throughout the game, and is really accentuated by the music – much like the art style, the music is simple, straight forward and it suits the theme well. Hell, the sound in general suits the theme – it’s just simple, it doesn’t over complicate. A lot of developers either pay no attention to sound at all (Which is one of my most frequent complaints against games), or they really overdo it and it sounds ridiculous.
As an overall package, Bob Came In Pieces really impresses with it’s laid back style and quirky gameplay, representing quite a high level of polish for a game of it’s tier. With a pricetag of just £6.49, I would have a hard time not recommending it for fans of the genre – but it’s not for everyone. Some gamers will find it’s just not for them, but that’s the kind of risk you run when you develop an Indie Puzzle game, I guess. A solid release for a relatively small time developer. I’m looking forward to seeing what else they have in store.
Written – Chris Mortimer
Buy Bob Came in Pieces now on GamersGate!
Bobby Gooding (AKA Ironhammers) - Based in Ipswich, UK, Bobby is the Editor and founder of Ironhammers.org, 
