Action platformers can often be some of the most fun video games in the industry. Since the beginning, when video games were mostly confined to arcade machines, action games such as Donkey Kong and Frogger were one of the biggest genres of the industry. Aside from Rail shooters and Fighting games, Action games have been a major influence on the video game landscape, with them spawning some of the most well-known and beloved franchises. Most games would also later on start incorporating traversal mechanics, which eventually led them to become their own separate genre known as the platformer genre. Bionic Bay not only lives up to the platformer genre, but its setting and fun gameplay design help elevate it into a genuinely immersive experience.
Developed by Psychoflow and Mureena and published by Kepler Interactive, Bionic Bay is a love letter to old school 80s and 90s platformers and action adventure games while also modernizing the genre for players with modern technology and hardware. Bionic Bay seeks to stand out with its heavily physics-based gameplay and highly detailed environments. The gameplay of bionic Bay centers around interacting with the environment via the swap mechanic which allows for all things object or human to swap places with each other, which can lead to strategic puzzle solving while also allowing opportunites for players to solve them creatively for example, if a player approaches an object that is firing a perpetual laser they can use the swap mechanic to swap with a nearby object such as an explosive device which can take out said laser in order for them to pass through unharmed. The same can also happen if players were trying to pass underneath or beyond an area that is blocked by an explosive; they can activate swap and switch places with a laser, which will destroy the object blocking the path forward. The swap mechanic can lead to many creative means of progressing through the environment, such as building bridges with floating objects in order to get across huge gaps, getting past dangerous obstacles like lasers, furnaces, electrical conduits, etc. There is no end to the many creative possibilities and solutions that the swapping mechanic can lead to when it comes to getting from point A to point B especially since nearly everything both human or object can be burned, broken, frozen, exploded, or even vaporized, which can add a strategic layer to the puzzle solving of the game which is what leads to many opportunities for players to solve them as creatively as they can. With snappy controls and fluid movement, Bionic Bay creates a high-adrenaline and action-packed moment-to-moment gameplay. Each level is uniquely designed to feature strange, sci-fi technology and physics-based mechanics that are perfect for speed running.
The world of Bionic Bay is a rich, biomechanical world teaming with imaginative devices, mysterious technology, and peculiar inhabitants. It focuses heavily on environmental storytelling through immersive landscapes and pixelated art style, which features ambient music, sci-fi sound effects, and lighting to emphasize the mysterious atmosphere of the world of Bionic Bay. The game is built to be a very charming action platformer with many replayability and speedrunning opportunities for players to enjoy. The main character of the game early on is hit with a beam that rubberizes his body so that no matter how much damage he takes he will always get back up unless he is crushed or completely destroyed. This leads to a humorous while also immersive display where the character will ragdoll every time he leaps or falls. While this may not seem like much, ragdoll physics in any game immediately makes it much more fun to watch and play because players may never know what combination of positions their character can end up in. It also makes the gameplay feel more loose and fast-paced, whereas a game with very stiff gameplay mechanics can make it seem slower and sluggish. Fast-paced mechanics like this can help a game, especially one that’s built for speed running. The environmental storytelling of Bionic Bay is very captivating, with it being a biomechanical post-apocalyptic world, anything in the background will no doubt catch a lot of people‘s attention, especially those who are interested in that type of genre. The lighting, especially with its use of shadows, is some of the best I have seen in a platformer in a while.
Overall, Bionic Bay is an extremely enjoyable experience and another fantastic platformer. The detail in both gameplay and environmental immersion is phenomenal, with it offering a large amount of replayability and multiple eye-catching moments that are sure to engage players who are massive platformer and science fiction fans. Hopefully, Bionic Bay can receive a following because the game certainly deserves as much praise and attention as it deserves with it not only being a great platformer but also a great indie game.
Overall Score: 9 out of 10
Reviewed on PC
