Bionic Bay from Psychoflow Studio, Mureena Oy and Kepler Interactive is a 2D puzzle platformer. We’ve seen numerous games over the years that fit this description so what does this one do differently that sets it apart from the rest?
To find out, let’s break it down, shall we?
Bionic Bay
In Bionic Bay, players will take on the role of a scientist who miraculously survives an experiment gone awry. Right at the start of the game, a group of scientists are conducting some tests on what looks like a giant egg when suddenly lightning bursts forth from it and it essentially fries everyone to death instantly, except for your playable character. Once you wake up in the ruins of the destroyed lab, you venture forth into the dangerous unknown world. While clearly quite injured, you come across an experiment that imbues you with elastic powers and this truly kicks off your journey.
Bionic Bay is broken up into chaptered levels where you will need to traverse traps, pitfalls, broken pipes, platforms, bombs, death spikes, sludge, molten metal, etc. The list of dangers is quite intense and trust me on this one, you will die. A lot. What good is a modern platforming game if it isn’t challenging huh?
Thankfully though Bionic Bay seems to have had some truly sensible designers who have learned the art of proper checkpointing, if you end up dying to a particular trap, chances are you will respawn right before it and won’t have to slog your way through numerous other traps before simply dying again. This immensely reduces the frustration factor and dare I say, makes the game quite addictive.
You can simply try your best, fail, rinse and repeat until you get past a particular dastardly section. This does however come with a caveat which I will get to shortly but first let’s talk about the gameplay elements a bit.
In Bionic Bay, due to your aforementioned elasticity powers, players can jump and bounce around quite easily. A double jump dash of sorts will help you get across large gaps and eventually, you’ll gain access to a “swap” mechanic.
This allows your character to slap an object and then after pressing a button, instantly teleporting to where the object was while the object teleports to where you were standing. Swapping places with objects is essential to progressing throughout the game and this mechanic is used to great effect. Puzzles can often have more than one way of solving the because of this mechanic too and it’s great to see it in action. Controls in the game are also very responsive and cause minimal stress thankfully.
Later on in the game, you’ll also gain access to the gravity mechanic which was heavily featured in the game’s pre-launch trailers. However, this mechanic was severely underused in the game and I honestly expected a lot more of it but alas, this isn’t the case. There are segments where you will have to combine all your abilities to get through and these are quite satisfying to complete when you finally figure things out.
This also brings me to one major gripe that I have with Bionic Bay. The game is quite inconsistent. Earlier levels are incredibly well done and you’ll be hooked. However, as the game goes on, slowly but surely a level of frustration creeps its way in when the puzzles start to become similar and repetitive. This essentially turns a few levels into a mildly painful grind of trial and error as you try to get past them. To alleviate this problem, I would suggest playing Bionic Bay in shorter bursts so the fatigue doesn’t set in.
Graphically, the game is absolutely beautiful with the 2D environment featuring plenty of gorgeous visuals to soak up. The 2D world is eery, creepy and quite vibrant at times with bright neon lights saturating the rest of the gritty post-apocalyptic world. The game’s aesthetic just gels perfectly with the type of game it is and honestly, it reminded me of both Limbo, Inside and a platformer I played 5 years ago called Stela. Environmental storytelling does a lot of heavy lifting in propelling you forward.
The game’s soundtrack also fits it perfectly with plenty of music tracks that have been crafted perfectly for the levels they are applied to. The ambient vibes of some of the tracks suit the visuals perfectly and when they’re interspersed with the sound effects of explosions, metal thunking, lasers firing and more, it’s great.
The game also features online leaderboards for speedrunners to have a go at and while I don’t think I personally would be attempting this, I’m sure there will be a niche group of gamers who will absolutely love this fact. This also adds longevity to the game which wouldn’t necessarily be there if this option wasn’t included.
Final Verdict
Bionic Bay is an excellent 2D puzzle Platformer that will keep you busy for roughly around 8 hours or more depending on how fast you try to speed through levels. You should definitely play this game in bite sized chunks though to ensure that you don’t wear yourself out on the puzzles and don’t frustrate yourself too much when it becomes repetitive or challenging.
Bionic Bay Trailer
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The code was provided by the distributor.
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