GAME REVIEW | In a Dreary World, "Bionic Bay" Delivers Exciting Adventure
When you first enter the world of Bionic Bay, you’d be forgiven if Limbo or Inside came to mind. Those two silhouette side-scrollers have set the standard for their genre for a long time. However, when Psychoflow Studio’s debut game (made alongside Badland designer Mureena Oy) starts throwing everything at you, that’s when you see the kind of thrill ride it offers you. In fact, just as I do on a high-octane roller coaster ride, Bionic Bay made me laugh maniacally!
The story is as common as you can get with side-scrollers. An explosion in a lab, a mystery behind why it happened, and a dark world that is out to kill you. But the story doesn’t matter much in Bionic Bay, even if the corpses of your coworkers have some interesting stories to tell you via holograms. No, where the game really pulls you in is in its mechanics.
Running, jumping, and leaping are key to survival. Once you learn to teleport swap with other items, that’s when things get interesting. During these moments, it becomes key as to where you’re teleporting to and which item you’re swapping with. Get it right, and you move on to the next part of the level. Do it wrong, and you’ll find yourself flattened like a pancake!
In some areas, time control becomes your best bud. Slowing down the world allows you to run through speedy gears or avoid dripping lava. Again, it’s about the right moment to implement the power, as you’ll often have a sliver of downtime to get it done properly. One slip of the fingers, and you’ll discover one of the many ways you’ll die.
This is where Bionic Bay gets its puzzle aspects right. It allows you to do trial and error with every obstacle that’s in your way. You will fail countless times, but every moment of failure is often too entertaining to get frustrated with. Being squashed by boxes, falling down a bottomless pit, burning alive, lasers, platforms plummeting underneath your feet, and being blown up by bombs and rockets. Every death scene is not only delightfully detailed; it’s also laugh-out-loud funny!
Frustration may peer its ugly head for some of the tougher areas, but giving up is never in the cards. That’s because this game has a fantastic checkpoint system, which allows you to experiment and fail countless times until you get it right. In fact, you may just want to try failing just to see how many kinds of deaths your character can experience! Every moment of success you’ll earn will result in a cheer; every slip-up will result in a good chuckle.
Bionic Bay is a bleak place, but its setting comes alive in wonderful, mysterious ways. Dripping pipes, rotting gears, and even the occasional green landscape are all showcased with great beauty and care. The way your character moves is very fluid, taking on rag doll mechanics whenever you make for a big slide down a pipe or accidentally forget to tuck & roll during a big drop. (Trust me: somersaults are your friend in this game!)
Controlling the game is also a breeze. Climbing, jumping, and using your special powers never get in the way of one another. Every command is spaced out nicely, where it’s nigh impossible to make a mistake. Your only enemy is your own judgment, be it with how long a jump is or whether or not something is going to blow up if you touch it. (The answer to the latter is yes, it will.)
One of the other things that will make Bionic Bay a game to come back to is its online mode. Speedruns are the name of the competition, as you try your best to be the fastest scientist in the world. (You can even create your own scientist!) These competitions are often updated, so you can keep on coming back weekly to see how you can top the rest of the player base.
PROS:
- Great level designs
- Very fun puzzles
- Hilarious deaths
- Solid online speedruns
CONS:
- Some frustrating levels later on
- Story is average at best
FINAL THOUGHTS:
It may be a scary place, but Bionic Bay offers so much damn fun! Whether it’s the puzzle mechanics, the powers you learn, or the many ways your scientist can and will die, Kepler Interactive’s latest is an indie game wonder! Sure, it may remind you of other dark platformers, but Bionic Bay has an adrenaline-inducing style that will keep you diving deeper into its world.
FINAL GRADE:
Promotional consideration provided by Creeson Martin of Tinsley PR. Reviewed on the PS5.
