Our review of Bionic Bay, developed by Psychoflow Studio and Mureena. Available now on Steam (reviewed) and PS5.
WHAT IS IT?
A devilishly tough platformer with an evocative, eerie aesthetic.
IS IT GOOD?
It’s deeply rewarding, with big payouts for those who can soldier on despite its unrelenting difficulty.
WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?
Gamers looking for a serious challenge.
DEEP AND ABIDING
Limbo, the 2010 minor-key masterpiece from Playdead Studios, is one of the great puzzle-platformers. Combining a horror-tinged black-and-white aesthetic with tricky brain-teaser gameplay, it also tells a fascinating, if disturbing, story about death and decay.
Itself inspired by puzzle adventure games of the past, Limbo launched its own microgenre, with titles like Little Nightmares, Silt, and Playdead’s own Inside following in its creepy-crawly footsteps. We can now add to that list Bionic Bay, a similarly low-budget, small-team effort which pairs the aesthetic of Limbo with the diabolical precision-platforming gameplay of Super Meat Boy. It’s a devilishly tough little game, but one that’s worth sticking with just to experience its many varied, wonderfully realised, environments. Just expect to bang your head (and that of your character’s) against more than a few walls.
SPEED RUNNER
Bionic Bay is not for the faint of heart.
That’s true from both an aesthetic perspective, and because its pixel-precision gameplay can be maddeningly tough. That’s fine, for those into that sort of thing, but it’s worth the warning for prospective players. That said, Bionic Bay gets a lot of things right, alleviating some of the frustrations associated with this genre.
Most importantly, Bionic Bay has a more or less instant-checkpoint mechanic; the game expects you to try and fail its challenges repeatedly, and it auto-checkpoints you to just before each challenge to ensure you can get right back in the swing of things. This approach was popularised by Super Meat Boy (where the conclusion of a level was a darkly hilarious animation depicting every single one of your fatal attempts at conquering it), and it’s incredibly important here.
As for what that here is, BB stars a puny little ragdoll character, clambering through an increasingly complex landscape, in large part relying on a “Swap” mechanic unlocked fairly early in the game. In Bionic Bay, you can tag pretty much any object on screen, then, with the tap of a button, swap places with it. This initially allows you to do simple things – swap with an item on the other side of a gap, for example – but quickly evolves into precision-platforming challenges, which will have you swapping back and forth to dodge enemy laser beams, falling objects, and the like.
DROPPING IN
Bionic Bay does not overstay its welcome. With barely any story to speak of, its one and only purpose is to shepherd you through a delightfully challenging – if occasionally, frustrating – series of levels, intuitively teaching you new and wilder techniques as you go along.
The game’s ragdoll physics, which see your character dropping and flopping all over the place, are integral to the experience, since the game encourages you to “brute force” your way through puzzles, relying on the physics system to bounce you through to your next checkpoint. It is, admittedly, trial-and-error gameplay, but it’s trial-and-error gameplay which presents itself fairly, aided by an overgenerous checkpoint system.
While BB may lack the enthralling narrative or world design of its inspiration, it makes up for it in the admirably restrained 8-9 hour campaign on offer. It’s also perfectly suited for a portable system like the Steam Deck, where we played it: being able to pick up and play at ease, tackling a selection of challenges at a time (and suspending the game when you hit a particularly devious progression wall), is the way to play. You may not care about the fate of little ragdoll dude, but you’ll care about seeing him through to the final, deviously tough, levels.
***
Final score: 8/10 crash test dummies.
Visit the official website for Bionic Bay here.
