Now I have to be honest with you guys, mixed reality is a pretty hot thing nowadays, but it's personally not my thing. Don't get me wrong, there are some games that I enjoy in MR, but there are mostly just little games that I play to relax. I've got burned by too many projects that seemed interesting, but ended up being rushed, a mess or pretty disappointing.

Well I have to say that this curse has been broken in the last few days, because Shattered is now a game that I consider one of the best Mixed Reality game that I've played so far! Today I'll be making a deep dive into explaining exactly what makes this game a master piece, along with maybe one or 2 nitpicks that I have. But first, let's get you educated on the game a little bit!

Shattered came out on December 4th, 2024 and is available for $19.99 on the Meta Quest 3 and 3S. The developers are Playside Studios, which is funny because I only know them from the series Dumb Ways To Die, which is definitely not similar to the game that I'm about to talk now. Let's get into it!

Gameplay

Ok so Shattered is actually an escape room type of game, but it's super unique, and the game is very story focused. So you're not just thrown into rooms with no context. There are pieces of scenes and dialogue that happens between and during the rooms.

When you start a room, you are required to pick up a piece of mirror, aim it on one of your wall, and then watch your wall break into a room where you have to figure out the puzzle. But how do you reach in the room? Well that's actually the most exciting thing! You have to point at objects and furniture from that room, and then bring them inside your space.

You can then interact with them and figure things out. There's a lot of variety like opening drawers, figuring out how to stop the electricity with a certain machine, looking around to figure out the code of a lock, and, you know, escape room type of stuff, but right in your room at home!

Story

You are in the shoes of Jessica, a private investigator who's obsessed in looking into the big Wakefield corporation due to the conspiracy that is circling around it. All of a sudden, you wake up in this asylum called the Greyvale facility, not really remembering exactly how you got there.

So the main goal of the game is to figure out what is happening exactly, why don't you remember anything, and recover some of the missing memories.

What's nice about the game is that you'll encounter some people along your journey. First, you'll be spending a lot of time with Dr. Keipler. He's the specialist who is "supposedly" working on making you better. And then there's a friend you've made in the facility, Martha, who's also a patient. She is a retired actress who has her own problem. And then there's a few other people, including a misterious hallucination, that you'll encounter along the way.

What's cool about the game is that there's been a lot of work in the character development. As you progress, you get to learn more about them, and they do all have an interesting backstory.

Difficulty

There's no difficulty settings in the game, but I just want to take a moment to talk about this. I've been talking to my friend MYT while playing. I was telling him how much fun I'm having, while trying to figure out why, since like I said, Mixed Reality is usually not my thing, and MYT raised a good point.

Something he noticed is that a lot of games in MR are simply just too easy. My assumption to that is simply because this is a fairly new market, so they're trying to please a large variety of players.

The point of this is to say that Shattered is not an easy game! They don't hold your hand throughout your playthrough, and sometimes you actually have to take a lot of time to figure things out. The puzzles and mechanics are great.

But if you do get stuck, there is a hint system for you to progress. It starts with a very light hint that doesn't explain much, up to 3 hints where the last one will pretty much tell you want to do.

I was very stubborn and tried really hard not to use any hints, but I ended up needing to use one because I was stuck in that room for about 2 hours and needed to move along haha. I'm not even frustrated after using the hint, because after being told what to do, I just find that it was a pretty genius idea. Without spoiling it, what I'm going to say is that they've found some pretty cool ways to use mixed reality with the puzzles. Basically things that could only be done in MR. You'll have to think outside of the box sometimes.

Is the game scary?

One thing that I want to mention is that the game is not focused on being scary, but there are some moments in the game. You will have light jump scares when you unlock some of the puzzles, but it's not too repetitive to a point of being annoying. I was pretty immersed in the game while playing, and there are some parts where I was really like "Get me out of here", and don't get me started when they fill your actual room with water. It was super cool, but at the same time, so stressful. In my opinion, they really nailed what they were trying to achieve.

Nitpicks

As you might've learned by now, I've really enjoyed Shattered. But there are still a few things that could've improved in there.

The biggest annoyance for me is that there's a looooot of reading. Don't get me wrong, the text that I've read was very interesting and brings a lot of lore in the game. But to be completely honest, reading in VR is simply boring. I don't know how this could've been improved, maybe it would've been cool if they showed memories instead, but I understand that this would've required a bigger budget and more time.

Second thing that I noticed is that the tools that they give you in every rooms are always the same. The main tools that you'll find are a flashlight, a wrench, and a crowbar. I would've loved to see different tools per room. Since after acquiring them, it was a lot easier to understand what you need to do with them later in the game.

There might've been bugs in the game, but I don't feel like it's worth talking about them. They were very minimal and did not lock me from my progress or anything.

So guys, I'm super happy that I got the chance to play Shattered. It was such an amazing experience, and the whole presentation of the game was really well done. I think that other people who's working on higher quality mixed reality games should learn from what they've done here, because these guys know exactly what makes an MR game fun! In my opinion of course.