The Shattering Reviews
That a game of such brief investment can't muster the strength or effort to get even the basics right is perhaps the most damaging thing you can say for a game like this.
The Shattering is a tough story to follow and has some uncomfortable moments, but it's an impressive spectacle at times and has a few tricks up its sleeve.
While The Shattering doesn’t have the scale or range of some genre entries, it's a fantastic example of a focused game that takes a vital and challenging issue and delivers a truly immersive experience.
The Shattering has a lovely setting and really interesting story, but is let down by a few iffy scenes and too much pixel hunting.
The Shattering has some big ideas that it simply isn't able to deliver on. There's a distinct lack of narrative cohesion along with pedestrian plotting and boring gameplay. Still, the game does some things that make it worth a bit of attention.
Whether you like methodically making your way from room to room and figuring out the greater narrative, or prefer long and lengthy spoken and/or text-based narratives that explain every single detail of the story, The Shattering should sit well with you. It has a decent blend of both, which are further complimented by the unique aesthetic. A pity then, how the player-character and accompanying cast are not as stimulating as the rest of the game. As a result, the overall experience is a mixed bag of genre filling tropes, ultimately boiling down to an adequate experience at best. Hopefully future titles from Super Sexy Software will only improve on the best parts of The Shattering.
The Shattering is a fantastic rendition of a psychological thriller that replaces tense dramatic action with a slow and subtle approach. It is well worth the buy for anyone who enjoys a rich and beautiful storytelling experience.
From a certain point of view, The Shattering is simply just another short, Unity based first-person adventure game, but you can feel the developers had plenty of passion and heart. The attempt at gameplay innovations should be applauded.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
The Shattering is a game that unfortunately suffers from a lot of the same problems as a lot of other walking sims and psychological horror games. It has a good premise and gorgeous details in the explorable areas, but it has too many pointless things to interact with, no payoff for thorough exploration, nothing hidden beneath the surface, terrible pacing, and tedious level designs.
It’s clear [Super Sexy Software] tried. I love the art direction, they tried to pull off something more original towards the end, and the little optional things you can interact with are fun and whimsical. I’d love to see where they go in the future, but I cannot deny that this is a fairly flawed title.
The Shattering is a surreal, psychological adventure game. The story might not be anything groundbreaking, but its portrayal of memories makes for an intriguing storytelling experience.
Thanks to some clever subversions of a troubling dive into the psyche, The Shattering could go down as a new favourite in the narrative thriller genre.