Game: Boxes: Lost Fragments
Genre: Adventure, Puzzle, Point & Click
System: Steam (Windows)
Developers | Publishers: Big Loop Studios | Snapbreak
Controller Support: No
Price: US $TBC | UK £TBC | EU € TBC
Release Date: February 1st, 2024
Review code used, with many thanks to Games Branding.
If you are a regular reader of LadiesGamers, you may remember we reviewed Doors: Paradox, a diorama puzzle escape game on mobile in 2021.
Big Loop Studios have now developed and released Boxes: Lost Fragments, which is similar in ways to Doors: Paradox and The Room series by Fireproof Games.
Play as the Legendary Thief in Boxes: Lost Fragments
You play as a legendary thief, and lucky you as your next assignment lures you into a grand and lavish mansion full of boxes to open, fragments to find and many puzzles to solve.
In the mansion, you find a hub area, which you return to at the end of each chapter, of which there are five. You also find a note from someone named Aurora that informs you that your services are required in order to obtain something very important, and you are given a key.
Ornate and Beautifully Designed Boxes
So begins your journey around the mansion, fiddling with ornate and beautifully designed boxes in order to solve the mystery and finally escape from the mansion.
You have a complete 360-degree view of each puzzle box placed on a table. You can zoom in on interesting parts in the box. You can push, slide and rotate different parts of the boxes and usually the table, too, and collect items to solve the puzzle box.
Collect Objects to Solve the Puzzles
Items you collect can be looked at closely, and some even have other useful objects hidden inside, so it’s best to check everything you find. You’ll be transforming the objects in your inventory and using those objects on other parts of the puzzle box.
Each chapter is tied to distinct sections of the mansion, and the chapters have four puzzle boxes to solve and four fragments to find, and then you return to the central hub. This is where the fragments are used in a larger puzzle, and then once you solve the fragment puzzles, it’s off to the next chapter.
Collect Fragments to Proceed
All the fragments you collect from each box have a purpose, too, as they are used to uncover a special object, a larger one that helps you progress in the game.
The hub area and all the chapters are integrated very nicely into the gameplay. It’s so easy to get sucked in when playing Boxes: Lost Fragments; by that, I mean I was totally engrossed in the box and uncovering the mysteries of the beautifully crafted box, and anything could have happened around me, and I wouldn’t have noticed; the puzzles hooked me.
While you are puzzling over the boxes, if you do have trouble solving them, there is a hint system that works well. It doesn’t show you the complete solution, as that would be cheating and defeating the purpose of a puzzle game. It points you in the right direction to proceed.
Visuals and Controls
The game’s graphics are gorgeous, and each box is highly detailed. Boxes: Lost Fragments looks exceptionally well on my laptop screen, with the colours of the box glinting in the game’s lighting.
The whole atmosphere in the game matches the storyline perfectly, and the music is the icing on the cake or the box in this case.
Conclusion
Overall, Boxes: Lost Fragments is a fantastic puzzler; the only complaint I have, which isn’t really a complaint, is that I wish the game was longer. I was disappointed to be finished with the game after six hours of gameplay. I enjoyed it very much.
If you enjoy these kinds of puzzle games, then Boxes: Lost Fragments will tick that box for you.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up 