There’s an awful lot of heart at the core of Pieced Together. A cosy,  scrapbooking puzzle game with a compelling narrative, you’ll start Pieced Together reminiscing about times gone by, and about your thoughts turn to one person in particular who meant an awful lot to you.

As you work your way through Pieced Together’s six chapters, you’ll solve gentle, often tactile puzzles in order to progress. The puzzles revolve around completing scrapbook pages, as you work your way through the objects and clippings that remind you of your younger days.

Placing pictures in a specific order, cutting out shapes to stick onto your pages in a certain way, and using clues to solve mysteries are just a few of the things you’ll find yourself doing over the course of the game.

It’s a perfect fit for the Steam Deck, for the most part, because the experience is at its best when it feels truly tactile, and the touchscreen controls are great for that exact experience. I did find that I had to resort to using standard controls at some points, however, due to the slight fiddliness of certain game elements when trying to use the touchscreen. Note that this issue with unresponsiveness in control isn’t an issue at all outside of the touchscreen though.

The story itself is beautifully told, and even though there is an air of melancholy hanging over the story given that you’re looking back at happy times and a lost connection, there’s a sweetness to the friendship that develops here, and the scrapbook element gives it so many immersive, important details too. Writing a letter to your friend over the course of the game brings you back to the present as you recall the past, and it’s another great touch in a game that’s not short of excellent ideas, superbly executed.

The art style and music are both beautiful, with the wonderfully cosy aesthetic giving the game a brilliantly chilled out ambience. It’s never less than compelling, either, and I found it very difficult to put down once the story had utterly captured my attention.

Though short (I completed the game and found all stickers in just under two hours), there are still achievements to discover once you’ve played through the story once, and Pieced Together lingers in the mind long after the credits roll. It’s a poignant, beautifully told tale of the ways in which time can sometimes get away from us, and even our closest connections can find themselves drifting away.

The mechanics are cleverly implemented and immersive, all in service of the lovely, sometimes sad, but ultimately life-affirming story that Pieced Together delivers.

Pieced Together is due to be released on Steam on March 6th. You can try the demo and add it to your Steam wishlist here.

Many thanks to Glowfrog Games for providing me with a key for Pieced Together for review purposes.

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