The question Shattered has to answer is this: how badly do I feel like I want to get out?
Shattered is an escape room from your living room. That’s convenient and innovative, but risky: if I can see the comforts of my home in my peripheral vision, do I still feel the primal instinct to escape?
The answer is yes — the detail is worth unpacking.
Puzzles have a long history in gaming — board, console, desktop, and VR.
Physical escape rooms add a tantalizing ingredient to the puzzle formula: Adrenaline. It's fun to feel the urgency and claustrophobia of a locked room. Escape rooms are fun when seasoned with light mystery, when you team up with friends, and when there’s a precise clock to run against for top scoring. But at their core, they thrive on urgency and the primal instinct to escape.
Shattered draws obvious inspiration from escape rooms, and innovates by turning your living room into one using mixed reality: Fragments open portals in the walls, ceiling, and floor of your living room; you scan those scenes for objects to extract and manipulate. The game spans numerous rooms connected by a singular narrative. The result is access to an expansive world map, not just from the comfort of your home, but regardless of how much physical space your living room affords.
It was a delight to pull open a grate and peer through the room below, and stressful when my oblivious dog scurried over the portal in front of me.
Horror and headsets work well together: It’s scary to not know when something might lurch at you from any direction. Shattered is dark and moody. There’s creepy stuff scurrying about. You’ll sometimes get a flashlight and a blacklight to clear the fog of darkness, other times you’ll have to make do with whatever’s available.
So: Shattered has done away with the timer and the friendly co-op and leans into its strengths: Multiple rooms, narrative storytelling, amped-up horror. On those fronts, a physical escape room can’t hold a candle.
But still, the risk: If I’m playing from my living room, with my sofa, coffee table, and dog still visible in my peripheral vision, do I want to get out?
From the first room: decidedly yes. I’m Jessica, in an unfamiliar bedroom, and an uncaring guard has slammed shut the metal door in front of me. I hate it here. But… I love it.
Shattered can be tough in the same way any escape room or puzzle can: I got stumped at one point on a puzzle. I’m sure I’d deduced the right intended answer; I simply couldn’t find the key item needed to proceed, and used up my hints. Frustrating — I’m sure it’s *right there* under my nose. In a moment like this I’d be inclined to google for a walkthrough, but with a pre-release game copy I don’t have the luxury. In a real escape room, the gamemaster might intervene at this point for convenience. I’ll look forward post-release to an intrepid gamer writing up their tips, and can’t wait to dive back into the Shattered experience from there.
Imagine the added pressure if Shattered introduced a ticking clock or co-op support! In the meantime, Quest puzzlers, horror fans, and escape room aficionados have plenty to enjoy.
Shattered is available today for the Meta Quest 3 family for $19.99.
