FRACT
Review
A cryptic song, to be sure
by Jonathan Fortin
reviewed on PC
No Meaning Or Melody, cont.
Yes, that's right. You can't jump. Even though the game has a ton of floating platforms. Even though you sometimes get caught on a bump in the terrain and can't move forward like you're supposed to. Even though you must sometimes take leaps of faith by running off of one platform and hoping you fall onto another. I lost count of the amount of times the game would have been much more seamless if only I'd had the simple ability to jump. Many indie developers have the misguided belief that first-person platforming is fun. It almost never is, and FRACT manages to make it even more annoying than usual by removing the jump button entirely.
A Few False Notes
The lack of jumping isn't the only problem with FRACT's controls. Interacting with the game world at all requires you to right-click to enter “puzzle-vision.” You will then be able to see your mouse cursor, as well as floating icons you can click on. Now when you move the mouse it will move the cursor, not look around.
This leads to many very irritating problems. For one thing, you need to switch to puzzle-vision to even see what you can interact with, causing you to enter and exit puzzle-vision frequently, unable to know when you can interact with something and when you can't. You can't just stay in puzzle-vision all the time, either, because it makes moving and looking around much more cumbersome. Rotating objects in puzzle-vision can also prove problematic, as they frequently turn too much or too little. The result is that, even when the puzzles themselves are strong, the actual act of solving them can become very cumbersome.
All of these control problems could have easily been avoided. The developers could have just had the interactable icons appear in normal-vision, and allowed you to just click on them to interact with them. Simple. Instead, they went with an unnecessarily complicated system that constantly holds the game back from true greatness.
Synthesis
Over the course of the game, you gain access to an electronic music maker, which you are immediately brought to whenever you boot up the game. The more puzzles you finish, the more music tools you unlock, allowing you to create and customize your own electronic songs. You can save, export and upload the music you create as well. It's a nice touch, and a fitting reward for completing the game.
How much you enjoy FRACT's soundtrack will depend on your enjoyment of electronic noise music. And when I say electronic, I don't mean dancey stuff like Daft Punk or Deadmau5. It's more about slow-paced drones, buzzes, bleeps and bloops. I listen to quite a bit of electronic music, but I honestly found FRACT's soundtrack to be distracting and irritating at times, especially while trying to solve the puzzles. That said, other times it was fitting and atmospheric.
FRACT started as a student project, and it shows—it's riddled with problems, its desire to impress makes it experiment in ways that don't always work. However, it was also an award winning student project, and that shows too. Its sumptuous visuals, innovative puzzle design, and built-in music-maker make it a noteworthy indie title. There's a lot of pleasure to be found here, if you can forgive the glowing neon warts.
7.0
fun score
Pros
Innovative puzzles, aesthetically unique, built-in music maker
Cons
Awkward controls, frustrating platforming, frequent confusion