Welcome to my quick look at Fracter. I had the opportunity to sit down and play this game through and wanted to share my thoughts. Fracter is a puzzle game at its core. In a world of dark and light, your being has been split apart and you must traverse the various levels and challenges to re acquire your light.
From the get go, Fracter really captured my interest and set the mood by placing you right into the game with no fan fair or long introduction. Everything is presented in the game itself as you play through it. The controls are straight forward in that you only move and manipulate objects and for the most part they work well. I did fail a few puzzles due to getting stuck on a corner or not quite getting a box or light positioned just right in time, however even when you fail, the game saves often enough that you are never too far away from the puzzle you were working on. Speaking of puzzles. Fracter has some of my favorite kinds of puzzles as a mainstay. In many of the puzzles you have to direct light from a source to a receptacle in order to unlock the path forward. It plays to how my mind works to have to figure out how to bounce lights around the world to get through each piece. Along with orienting lights, you also will be activating platforms to change the height of things and pushing blocks around to trigger buttons and fill in holes.
Fracter does a wonderful job of introducing players to each puzzle element individually and then incorporating them into more challenging combinations later on. The puzzles don’t just involve static objects to manipulate in the world. You also have to contend with shadowy figures that roam many of the levels you’ll explore.
If you get too close, they will run after you and put out your light. Light itself is what draws all of the elements of this game together. The world itself is a canvas of darkness that is only illuminated by the lights you direct and the light your character shines. Due to this limited amount of light, much of the levels you traverse are obscured and only revealed as you move through them. The shadows cast around you and the shine of your light off of the surfaces of the level add a wonderful atmosphere to the game. All of these elements make for a very enjoyable play through and yet Fracter also has an extra charm in the delivery of the story. The only words in the game are those provided at the beginning of some areas. Poetic verses appear on the screen and give hints to what has happened and what you will be challenged with next. These words were more impactful to me as I read them out loud each time they resolved onto the screen. An example, “for every light the soul ignites a twin of shadow sprouts the light you wield can’t shine a shield or cast the shadow out.”
So is Fracter a perfect game? No, but it is a delight to play. I was able to enjoy it all in a single session. It doesn’t have much replay ability, unless you missed aspects of your light your first time through a level. So for the price, you will have to weigh how much you enjoy the experience against how long it actually lasts. I did enjoy it and you can too on PC and now Nintendo Switch.
Developer: 4L Games
Platforms: App Store, Google Play, Steam, and Nintendo Switch
Website: Fractergame.com
