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1Mar/110

Bob Came in Pieces Review


The title itself makes you smile and the play will have you working for hours in this fun, new physics based puzzle game about outer space. Bob Came in Pieces is a side scrolling platform game that takes you through many puzzles before you reach your goal.

The story is simple but cute and just engaging enough to get you started in this game of puzzles. Bob is more than your typical 9 to 5 employee at the galactic call center. He is an alien green octopod who enjoys everything about his job. He’s your Spongebob Squarepants of space. Every day he travels the usually safe intergalaxy route from his home to the office, but on this fateful day his reliable Hyperdrive 2000 is hit by a huge meteor and plummets him towards the nearest planet. With no space depot or inhabitants to help him fix his ride that broke into many pieces leaving just the body of the ship, Bob must find all the parts and fix his vehicle himself. Bob travels through different environments of this earth-like planet, transporting himself through portal after portal gathering all the parts. Bob must solve puzzles to continue on his journey and rebuild his spaceship at ship builders (marked with 2 crossed wrenches). What is left of Bob’s ship will take you to places unknown on this little planet to find hinges, extenders and what-have-you to make a whimsical, but efficient, unit for returning to the job he loves most.

The play is to navigate what’s left of Bob’s spaceship looking for the missing parts. There are up to 5 pieces of your ship in each location. Each part of the ship helps solve new puzzles, so you need to track down as many pieces as possible. You get to a rebuild station to put these parts you find back on the ship. Some of the pieces will push, pull, or hook to enable you through the many environments such as the steamy jungles, cold icy or cavernous areas so familiar to many platform games.

The tricky part of this game is you must be careful where you place each piece on the ship. The round spaceship has 8 connectors where you can place your pieces. How your ship is weighted with these pieces is important. If you do not balance the parts, you may be flying sideways or even crashing. The different pieces perform many functions and each function is assigned a key on your keyboard by you so if you want to use your space bar for the pull feature, it will help you maneuver your craft a little more easily. There are 3 different thruster at a time and you must remember to balance out each one to travel smoothly. They also can burn through objects like bushes. Another useful maneuver is to speed through barriers like the ice. You’ll need gadgets to jockey around rocks. In the beginning, like other games, there are a lot of experimenting and trying out before you can get everything in sync, but weighing the devices so they are balanced will avoid gravity from pulling your ship down. You steer your ship to the portal or exit in each level as in most scrolling platform games.
Sometimes the game can be a little repetitive, but with being able to customize your own funky ship, it keeps you motivated to complete the tasks. Anytime your ship design is bad, you will get stuck or fly crooked, but if you hit enter, it will get you back to the last ship builder to reconfigure your vehicle. If you are really, really stuck, use the help button represented by a question mark on the upper right hand side of the screen.

Overall Bob Came in Pieces is one awesome and original game with great cartoon graphics and very interesting backgrounds. It’s different from any other platform game I played, and it’s refreshing to know that there are people out there thinking up great new Mac games. It is fun to play, enjoyable to look at the artwork and good listening to the music. Some of the puzzles are challenging but not impossible and Bob can’t die so you can keep going on the journey. There’s nothing like it out there, but the closest thing I could think of is that it is a cross between Bud Redhead, Mario and Crystal Cave Classic. There are a lot of puzzles to keep your mind active and in shape. It does take some thinking to put together the ship and to get by blocks created by obstacles. What more do you need in a game with a great title like Bob Came in Pieces?

Features of Bob Came in Pieces:
-14 Stages
-Medals
-Physics Based Puzzles

Rating: ★★★★☆