Boxes: Lost Fragments

Good atmosphere, beautiful image

Boxes: Lost Fragments is a puzzle box game that is high on beauty and spectacle, but relatively low on puzzle complexity and brain-power requirements. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I don't think experienced puzzle game players should go into this game expecting to need to think outside the box, which I suppose is fitting. What Big Loop Studios has excelled at creating here are 20 very intricate and beautiful boxes that feel like realized mechanisms. They're fun to take apart and fiddle with. Most actual puzzles consist of basic turning of dials, moving of blocks, and aligning of shapes. If a puzzle solution seems difficult or complex, you're almost certainly overthinking it. A few puzzles look quite complex, but their solutions are actually fairly simple once you look beneath the surface. Most of the times I ever got stumped during this game, which wasn't often, it was because I hadn't noticed some small compartment or doo-dad rather than because a puzzle was a stumper. There's also a light mystery to unravel, but it doesn't really go anywhere interesting in my opinion. The player character doesn't really feel like an agent in their own story or like a fully-realized being with goals and feelings. I won't spoil, but that may be intentional. It's hard to say. At any rate, there is a cohesive sort of mechanical-alchemical world that Boxes exists in, and the technologies that exist in this world are quite satisfying to see in motion. I think what this game really excels at is making impossible machines feel possible in a physical, mechanical way. I had fun with my ~4.5 hours exploring these boxes, but I never really felt like I was really straining my brain, and my brain is nothing special.