The Many Pieces of Mr Coo is a hand-drawn, 2D, point and click game from Nacho Rodríguez, who, prior to this game, was known as an animator of short films, such as A Life Story (2013).

This quirky little game is a lot of fun

The game is in two halves. The first is where Coo initially gains an apple only to lose it. After successfully regaining his apple, he is promptly attacked, cleaved into three pieces and deposited in a castle. The second half of the game has you trying to reunite all three parts of Coo.

This quirky little game is a lot of fun, even though a lot of the first part felt more like an interactive cartoon, with quite a few animated sequences that you cannot interact with, the second half of the game is less so.

The puzzles themselves may have an internal logic, but in reality, you’re going to be guessing most of the answers. Sometimes its because an object does not look like what you would expect it to do, it took me ages to work out that one thing was supposed to be a rain cloud.

There is also a sequence in the castle where Coo must shove his nose through a hole, something which may have solved part of the puzzle but made no sense as Coo’s nose is not the correct shape for the solution.

The game is akin to a surreal cartoon, which therefore relies on cartoon logic. Often this means that you spend time clicking on anything to see if a particular combination will allow the story to continue.

The game is akin to a surreal cartoon

Because of the absurdist nature of both the story, animation and puzzles the game does offer you a hint book if you get really stuck, which you will, as it is possible to get to points in the game where you have incorrectly tried to solve the puzzle only to leave Coo unable to continue forward. Fear not, although it does not look like you can save your game, the game saves itself at particular points, so if you hit a brick wall, just exit and re-enter the game.

Overall, it is a very beautiful game to look at, but if I had to have a criticism, it's that the game is extremely short. You should be able to play through it between forty minutes and an hour.

7

Charles Packer