Having recently played Grim Fandango, I decided to check out another point and click game, The Many Pieces of Mr.Coo. Although this game is short, it features a vibrant display of puzzles and challenges that feel innovative to the point and click genre, notably, the ability to ask for tips in game.
Note, I want to preface that there will, of course, be spoilers for the game ahead in terms of visuals, but I will try not to spoil how to solve any of the puzzles as well as any key visusuals, especially since this is a very short game and a great weekender game.
Once you start, you are brought into a world that is a mix of beautiful cut scenes and surreal environments; Playing through a mix of playable environments and animations that are either interactable or through seamless cutscenes. This continues for the first two thirds of the game, where I personally felt strong feelings of joy and accomplishment due to the nature of the puzzles. Coming to the end of the second half, I was fully immersed and wanted to do as much as I could to explore this incredibly stylised world. The animations felt uniquely weird and trippy, which made me excited to see the next one. Throughout that entire section of that game, everything felt fluid, and it built upon each section beautifully, where you would just complete a task and continue on your journey.
The last third of the game is where it started to lose me. Rather than continuing on a journey, the player is met with an obstacle and split into thirds, hence the title. From that point on, you must try to reconnect with the different parts of your body while traversing 4 different interconnected rooms. Each room has its own series of puzzles, where some aspects are interconnected with other rooms. It makes for an interesting shake up in terms of gameplay, and for the most part, it felt good and enjoyable, but this shake up was not without its flaws.
One such flaw is that puzzles feel less intuitive. While playing the first half, I never once used the hint book to help aid in solving the puzzles, whereas in the second half, it almost became a crutch. I would chalk it up to how, in the first half, there were a lot of scene transitions, and the challenges still felt intuitive enough to figure out on your own. But as I stated, due to the last third of the game being located within one large area rather than a bunch of smaller areas, it felt less rewarding to complete a puzzle. The first half had the loop of visual cut scene -> gameplay puzzle that leads to a cutscene for a new area. But once you get to the last third after the puzzle you complete, you find that there is more to do in that area, several times. Making it feel less rewarding as a player.
One big highlight is the fact that the developer semi anticipated that flaw. Anyone who has played a point and click game knows that some puzzles are completely ridiculous and, at times, feel random in terms of what you need to do. So with the inclusion of a hint system that is built into the game itself, it feels incredibly innovative.
Lastly, as a small note, I disliked the pause menu UI as it was just images and not labels, which probably helped with fewer translations. But because of that, I accidentally deleted my save instead of saving about 45 minutes into my first time playing. This caused me to have to restart, which I was fine with but annoyed.
In conclusion, The Many Pieces of Mr Coo innovated on the point and click genre in a beautiful way, but still can lead to frustrations found in the genre’s common pitfalls. I would definitely recommend this game to anyone who likes point and click games, especially with how short the play time is.