Pieces
7/10
You know, when I was a kid I didn’t take my dad’s car out for a joyride against his explicit instructions not to do so. Nope, I had my own car. But what’s a kid to do when your dad has a cool ride and you just have to take it for a spin? Pffft, you jack it and drive like hell is what you do 
(note, this is not my actual advice) Of course trouble arises when you crash the ol’ car and you have to call pops to bail you out. But what happens if your car is smashed into tiny pieces and you’ve gotten a knock to the head and have no way to phone home? Well, you’re gonna have to wing it.
Pieces is an adventure game where you have to travel around the planet you’ve crashed on recovering the shattered remains of your ship so you can reassemble it and get back home. Unfortunately you seem to have lost even your most basic motor skills in the crash and you have to learn how to do things from the resident aliens. You know, simple things like walking and jumping. The controls for Pieces involve using your arrow keys to move around and the “Z” key to jump. You can press “I” to bring up an information menu that shows you how many ship pieces you’ve collected and, once you have the right component, where the next piece is. You can gather the ship pieces out of order though, so don’t let the information menu be a strict guide for you. You will encounter some glitches here and there, but there shouldn’t be any show stoppers. Save frequently and don’t be scared about jumping down pits. You don’t die from high falls unless you land in lava.
In terms of graphics Pieces reminds me a great deal of Knytt or Cave Story. You may also see bits of Metroid or Super Mario Bros here and there, just without enemies. Regardless, the graphics are very well done and definitely add to an already great game.
Occasionally there is music, mostly when you hit certain screens. There is no mute option but the music and sound effects are both rare enough that you shouldn’t have to worry about that being much of a nuisance. What music is there is well done and tasteful.
Don’t worry, I’ll see about writing up a walkthrough for Kongreguide in the next few days.
9/10. Great job with the graphics.
8/10. Can you get all of the gems? Definite replay value here to see if you can’t improve your score.
7/10. Some more ambient sound effects would have been nice.
6/10. This is an awful lot like Knytt minus having to learn new skills as you go.
7/10. WASD or customizable controls would have been a nice addition. Glitchy controls at times, especially when you hit corners of platforms.
This was made for the JayIsGames Casual Gameplay Design Competition 5. I get the impression that the author was in a rush as there are some glitches that really could have been improved upon. 7/10
Tags: adventure
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