Great things come in small packages and FRACTER is pretty great…and pretty small/short, but in the case of this black and white puzzle game that’s a good thing, as it captures your attention for 2-3 hours then makes a graceful exit before wearing out its welcome. Few games can pull off the whole black and white vibe without seeming obvious or overtly trendy. Limbo did it nicely and FRACTER does it better with a minimalist approach to level design where all the focus is put into the actual puzzles. Even the setup and story is barebones with a few screens of flowery text to get you started and additional text coming between each of the seven chapters.
You’ll be playing as a young girl who, after engaging in the short tutorial, will enter a mysterious portal of light. Beyond is a large circular room with a single glowing orb hovering in the center. Once this orb “tethers” itself to the girl it will follow her around acting as her mobile light source in some seriously dark levels. Seven pillars surround the outside of this room and getting close to them will transfer some light from the orb and eventually activate them all, which in turn causes a sinister dark mirror to rise up from the center. Naturally, the girl touches it and multiple copies/reflections of herself spill out of the mirror and scatter into the far corners of the various levels you’re about to explore. You’ll need to explore each of the seven doors to find the missing pieces of yourself and defeat the darkness.
The puzzles in FRACTER range from simplistic in the first few levels to super-challenging in the final two levels. The game slowly builds on itself with more complex designs, environmental mechanics, and elaborate solutions. The puzzles are all light based, giving you a light source and a dark cube that needs illuminated, usually by bouncing the light off of mirrors to create a path between the two. The first few puzzles are fairly obvious but then the game throws in rotating sections of the levels and later on you’ll have to deal with sections that raise and lower. For the light to travel there must be an unbroken surface of tiles, so sections must be at the same elevation and any holes in the floor need to be filled with large blocks that can be summoned with a push of a button and then pushed across the floor to snap into the open pit. Then it’s all about rotating the light source and the mirrors to create a path of light to the dark box.
To complicate matters FRACTER has these creepy shadow creatures that wander the levels in short repeating patterns. If you get too close they will screech and chase you down unless you can manage to run away and hide in the darkness. If they touch you then you get sent back to the last checkpoint, which are very generous in this game. You’ll never replay more than 30 seconds. While the game tries to build tension by wanting you to sneak and avoid these creatures, I found it far more enjoyable to kill them using any nearby light source. There are rotating light columns and shuttered wall panels that you can turn off and wait for the creatures to walk into their path before turning on and frying them. There are also safe zones where you are bathed in light while trying to figure out the rotation and elevation puzzles. You can step outside these to lure the creatures into attacking then step back into the light and watch them fry. It was much more relaxing clearing an area of enemies before trying to solve the puzzles.
The presentation for FRACTER is quite compelling with some crisp high-res visuals and a full-featured settings menu to choose resolutions up to 4K and tweak all the graphics settings you’d expect to find in a major release. The game is highly scalable for a wide variety of PC’s and looks incredible with some awesome lighting and shadows cast in real-time by your floating orb of light. You’re ability to create shadows and then hide in them is a big part of the game. There were times where some branching paths of the levels were totally hidden in darkness, giving you good incentive to scour the perimeter of every area for a concealed walkway or hidden staircase often leading to one of those missing reflections.
The soundtrack is simple and elegant and at times a bit haunting, but it is always the perfect complement to whatever is taking place on the screen. The use of 3D positional audio was outstanding with all sorts of environmental and creature sounds popping up in the appropriate speaker in my surround sound setup. There is no narration, just simple sounds and simple music that never detracts from the puzzle-solving.
FRACTER is short and most gamers will knock this out in less than three hours. There are a handful of achievements to unlock, most earned by simply completing the game and a few others for specific tasks. Several of these achievements are bugged. I earned one for “not dying” even though I did die. I also killed at least 20-30 shadow creatures using the light but didn’t earn the achievement for killing just five of them using light. The game also glitched when tracking my reflection collectibles, saying I had missed two back on the second door (I did not), and when I went back and got them again the three I had just earned behind Door 7 were no longer showing up. That massive level takes 30+ minutes to complete when you know how to solve it. Admittedly, these are small glitches that aren’t game-breaking, but I did have one serious bug behind Door 5 where I was stuck pushing a block across rotating bridge sections, and I had to reload the level. Thankfully, all my collectible reflections were still shown as collected, but I did have to redo all the puzzles leading up to where I had gotten stuck, which turned out to be the end of the level.
FRACTER is an almost-perfect puzzle game, great for playing alone in the dark with headphones or a good surround system. The rise in difficulty is a bit uneven with a sharp increase around Door 5, but even when this game is throwing its toughest puzzles at you, you can’t help but have fun knowing that there are finite positions for all the pieces and if you can’t deduce the solution, you’ll eventually stumble upon it. It’s not often $7 buys you this level of entertainment; especially a game that will appeal to all ages and skill levels. Definitely give FRACTER a shot.
