The Missing Piece

C. Young (2008)


The Missing Piece is not a text adventure, but a CRPG done in text, with barren room descriptions, that focuses heavily on combat. It has an ugly interface and problems with loading the game in a maximized screen. If you do load the game in a maximized setting, you'll get small text windows that pop up. So you'll have to load it in the standard game resolution, maximizing it afterwards to view the text in long format. Good thing is, this is the only bug that I found.

The game uses a bare minimum of text to describe each room, like:

"You are at the bottom of the well. It is very damp and muddy. A layer of rotten leaves covers the bottom."

Adventure is better written than this.

Also, the interface has a series of action buttons, like: use, pick (for pick up), attack, and others, but fails to have an examine button. You have to examine things through a separate list box that you almost forget is there since you get use to the series of action button. Since the examine list really needs to be used, it probably should have been placed within the action tab, and handle like a "use" action.

The game focuses mostly on combat, and once you pick up a spell or two this becomes very repetitive. Monsters have very high hit points, like with the Orc. I had to do 1,266 points of damage to kill him. This is ridiculous, and the point total should be brought down. Also, with a few more types of spells, which should only work on certain monsters, it might change things up a bit; and using a spell should enter the player into combat. Once within combat, when the player uses a spell, it shouldn't vanish out of their inventory.

I found it a little strange that the game has guns and magic, where does this take place, in the world of Wizards? It seems more like the programmer wanted to help the player make it to the first place you can heal up, but it could be handled another way. Like at the beginning of the game the player could find their first magic scroll, giving them an offensive spell to fight off the monsters.

Also, the game has no undo command. So save often. When you die, and you will die, you can only load the game or start the game over again. And the game can't be completed in two hours. In the two hours I spent with it, I only got 42% of it completed.

In the end I felt this was a poor CRPG that relied heavy on combat, which becomes repetitive. The room descriptions barely do there job, and the story is all but non-existent. I don't think that this game is worth your time, especially if you're looking for a text adventure, and I gave it a 1.