I am impressed that this project has been brought back into attention. I was slightly involved with it back in 2008 or so, but at the time I was about 15-years old and had no experience with object oriented programming or LUA.
As for the puzzle pieces, they actually were chips in earlier buids. Chuck decided to change it to distinguish the game more from Chips Challenge, possibly to avoid any form of potential legal dispute. Most of the art was supposed to be preliminary, and the idea was to replace it with actual 3D models at some point.
One of the main ideas behind the engine was to have all blocks work as plugins. If you needed a very particular block for a puzzle, you would just code it in and included it along with the level file.
As for the puzzle pieces, they actually were chips in earlier buids. Chuck decided to change it to distinguish the game more from Chips Challenge, possibly to avoid any form of potential legal dispute. Most of the art was supposed to be preliminary, and the idea was to replace it with actual 3D models at some point.
One of the main ideas behind the engine was to have all blocks work as plugins. If you needed a very particular block for a puzzle, you would just code it in and included it along with the level file.