The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo Review (PS4)

The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo is a strange point-and-click adventure game that gives a great first impression with its hand-animated presentation. The titular Mr. Coo finds himself in a surreal, Wonderland-esque realm in which he’s unceremoniously chopped into three pieces. All he wanted was an apple.

Characters are hand-drawn and animated in a scrappy but pleasingly malleable fashion; objects and monsters morph and distort as they react to the world, and it looks great. In conjunction with some highly detailed backgrounds and surreal environments, there’s no doubt the game has a strong aesthetic. There are also some great musical flourishes throughout the short adventure.

The game begins very simply, with quite obvious things to click to advance through chapters. There are some proper puzzles to be found here, however, and in typical point-and-click fashion, they can be pretty obtuse. There’s no inventory to worry about, but even so, we came up against some scenarios with no clear answer. While some guesswork may be involved with finding certain solutions, there’s some clever design going on, especially in the latter half when you’re swapping control between Mr. Coo’s head and legs. Unfortunately, the torso doesn’t get much to do.

All told, the game should last you a couple of hours. Once you finish it the first time, pages are scattered throughout each chapter, giving you something to collect when you go through it again (which is much quicker once you know what you’re doing).

You don’t often see a “To be continued…” in games, but that’s how The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo concludes. It seems this is the first of at least two parts, which is good; this is a decent first effort, but there’s lots of potential for more involved puzzles in a follow-up.

We did run into one or two bugs, like the camera being in the wrong place and a hard crash, so it’s not the smoothest experience. Despite that, there’s a lot to like about this unusual little adventure. If you’re looking for a unique point-and-click game with surreal visuals, an eerie atmosphere, and some interesting puzzles, this is worth a shot — but we’re intrigued to see how it evolves in a sequel.