There is nothing more lovely than hand drawn cartoons, right? Filled with personality, love and care, can’t help but love ’em. But sometimes you have to draw… the line. At first glance, the Spanish adventure The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo is beautiful and whimsical and brimming with life. But soon, it reveals a much more frustrating side which lets things down quick. What happened? Find out in our Many Pieces of Mr. Coo review.

After making a series of hand drawn short cartoons by Nacho Rodriguez, the artist decided to take his little Mr. Coo character for a spin in a point and click adventure. In this, make no mistake, this is one of the best looking adventures you will play, period. The hand drawn 2D animation shines bright and makes every moment unique, think of La Linea mixed with a bit of Ren & Stimpy craziness.

There really isn’t any story to speak of, at least for the first half of the game. There are Vignettes after vignettes of Mr. Coo trying to open a present. Then, the poor guy gets cut in three pieces and is apparently kidnapped and imprisoned. Now he has to get himself back together again, solve some riddles and escape this castle.

While the blurb mentioned an “innovative take on the point and click genre”, I’m not really sure what it is referring to. This plays like an average point and click with no inventory. You just interact directly with items, not far removed from Anna’s Quest or Justin Wack. The main mechanic, which we’ve already seen in other games, is that of clicking on things while never knowing what it will happen. This of course leads to many slapstick and surreal moments, but when dealing with puzzles, this easily leads to confusion.

The first half of the game, which basically means the first 25 minutes, is great. Series of little vignettes where you lead Mr. Coo to meet various strange creatures while trying to eat an apple. Click around, watch some funny and random events, enjoy some great animation. Perfect. Then, the game decides it is time for more serious point and click mechanics. While controlling the head, you can switch to your other piece of Mr. Coo (pressing B on the controller or right mouse clicking) to solve puzzles together. This, unfortunately, only works half of the time.

Many times switching just won’t work. Either because the game decided that you cannot do so in this particular moment (but won’t inform you) or it is simply bugged. Animation sequences repeated randomly over and over, while trying to move Mr. Coo around. I clicked off screen and suddenly Coo had a cork in his mouth, which I had previously discarded. In my Switch version, also, several music cues were missing, icons supposed to signal exits were not there and the second half got worse and worse as time went on.

At the end, there is also a baffling timed puzzle which – if you miss – you have to die and repeat the whole thing over and over, with two unskippable cutscenes to boot. Also, compared to the PC version, the Switch version just seems to use lower quality images for the backgrounds which on my TV looked really low resolution. Sure, that gave a whole “playing a 1997 adventure” vibe which I did appreciate, but when I looked back at footage of the PC version, I ended up being quite disappointed with how bad the Switch version looks. Also, there are no controls for the sensibility of the pointer. This means that slightly touching your analog lever will send it flying all over the screen.

I wish I did not have to be so strict with The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo, because along with some beautiful 2D animation, the first half is really funny as well. The asking price of 15 euros for barely an hour of gameplay is not outrageous. But when you are dealing with bugs, frustrating controls and Switch-only problems, then recommending this adventure is difficult. At least, not in its present state. We will update the review when (and if) we hear back from the devs. As it is, those pieces are better left alone and you’ll have a better time watching one of Nacho Rodriguez’ shorts.

Our review of The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo was made thanks to a Switch review key made available by Mark Allen PR. The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo is available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox.