Review: Piece by Piece
I'm a little late on this one, as Piece by Piece actually came out a few weeks ago now: the same time as I opted to review Rhell: Warped Worlds and Troubled Times. In that article I mentioned that, for that particular week, I struggled to pick which game to look at as there were a lot of titles competing for my attention: and among them was Piece by Piece and… um, Piece by Piece.
Two games with the same name, released 48 hours apart. While I won't deny that coincidence brought about my initial interest in those games, it would be dismissive to say that's the only thing worth noting about them. So, here's our (slightly late and shorter-than-usual) review about one of those Piece by Piece-s.
Image: Gamkat / No More Robots
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Developer: Gamkat
Publisher: No More Robots
Release: 11 March 2026
Retail Price (Steam): 9,99€/$11.99/£9.99
In Piece by Piece you play as Oku, a fox who's taken over their grandfather's repair shop. At the start of the game you're greeted by him at the train station (which you will never see again), whisked off to the shop, and will immediately notice that the shop is in need of a few repairs itself – it's certainly seen better days, but presumably in your grandfather's advancing years he's begun to have a few problems preventing it from getting run down.
Image: Gamkat / No More Robots
Your first task will be to repair the shop's sign, which serves as the tutorial for the primary gameplay loop: getting belongings from customers – or in this instance, grandpa – and heading to your repair bench to put them back together. You're presented with a transparent hologram of a broken object along with a single piece of it, and you need to attach the other parts (usually around 8 to 12 of them) until it's fixed. You do that by rotating the object and the pieces until you've lined them up on the hologram, and then snapping them into place – nothing more arduous than that: no carefully applying glue or hammering in nails.
It's also relatively forgiving in terms of accuracy, you do have to get it into the right place but not with pin-point precision, and there's a nice little soft zoom that helps you know when you're on the right track. This mechanic is effectively the entire point of Piece by Piece and what makes or breaks it: if you don't think it'll be fun to spend a few hours doing that, albeit with some extra steps later on in the game, it's probably not going to be for you.
Those extra steps come in the form of cleaning and painting objects, once you've unlocked the appropriate tools. Dirty objects need a once-over with a sponge, and some items are brought in needing a fresh coat of paint. There are a few other things to occupy yourself with, outside of the item repairs, which you'll slowly unlock over your playthrough. Nothing major, but extra little tasks to complete: growing berries which you can make paint out of to save you having to buy it straight from the merchant, chopping wood and keeping your fireplace blazing to keep your customers happy, baking cookies on that fire to keep them even happier. The game tries to pack in a lot over its relatively short playthrough: the whole thing took around three and a half hours, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing, as much longer and it would start to overstay its welcome.
Image: Gamkat / No More Robots
It might sound like there's quite a lot to do in this game, and there sort of is – there's a further minigame that I didn't mention if you (for some reason) really want to play rock-paper-scissors, you can decorate the shop in a variety of ways, there's a couple of tables you can put items up for sale on… there are a lot of different aspects to engage with but unfortunately none of them have a huge amount of depth.
Everything feels like the most basic version of itself that it can be: you start seeing the same items pop up for repairing, the cleaning and paint systems are pretty rudimentary, and almost everything else is either buying things from the merchant or moving things from A to B. For a game that takes, being leisurely, about three and a half hours, there was also a lot of waiting: waiting for customers to come in because you didn't have anything else to do, waiting for your berries to grow so that you can get some paint. The whole process is pretty relaxing, the setting very cute, but also quite lonely.
Outside of the very brief intro sequence the game is confined to two scenes: inside the shop and just outside it, both of which often feel a bit empty. I couldn't make myself care about the other characters when I felt isolated and confined to that small area: it's not like there's a town you can pop into to see how things are, you just exist in this space that people sporadically enter to throw a broken item at you. The game ends with a celebration of camaraderie and everything you've done to help the town, but to me it didn't really feel like I'd done much – just fix random bits here and there for a community I wasn't really a part of.
Image: Gamkat / No More Robots
I don't want you to go away thinking I didn't enjoy my time in Piece by Piece, I did, but I wish that the game's ideas had been developed that little bit more. Its biggest boons are its aesthetic and how cathartic the repair mechanic is, and those combined are ultimately endearing enough that, for the short time it asks of you, it's an enjoyable experience.
It is awarded a 7/10 by IndieLoupe.com.
The reviewed product was purchased by IndieLoupe.com.
