Everything breaks down eventually. Engines fail, metal rusts, circuits short out and components break. A good machine can run for literally centuries with proper maintenance, but once that stops it’s only a matter of time before failure kicks in. Depending on the machine and its complexity that may mean that you hit a switch and nothing happens, but as things get bigger and more intricate, some parts may work while others don’t. If that’s the heating system in a car, it just means that you’ll want to bundle up in winter, but the industrialized world ofBionic Bayhas been neglected for a long, long time. There’s no fixing or ignoring the problems it’s facing and the best a lost scientist can hope for is to survive.
Rotting Metal and Disintegrating but Semi-Functional Machinery Makes the Best Playground
Bionic Bayis a physics-based 2D platformer set in a decaying industrialized world that’s seen much better days. A group of scientists were investigating an egg-like device when it activated, zapping everyone except for a lone tech before getting him too. Waking up in a run-down alien landscape (and assuming the dog featured at his side back in the lab is just fine) the scientist explored as best he could, which seeing as he’s merely human with the standard jumping and resiliency wasn’t particularly much. He’s trapped with nowhere to go, until accidentally activating a strange device that fills him with the power of a standard platforming protagonist. He’s now got a tough body that can resist the damage of long falls and legs that can jump almost twice his height plus a roll that can be triggered on the ground or mid-air to add plenty of momentum for clearing enormous gaps while avoiding angry defense systems.
Bionic Bay Proves Physics-Based Platformers Can Not Only Entice But Evolve
The final ability is found in a device dropped by the body of what’s probably another of the lost scientists and it allows you to exchange places with a marked chunk of level debris. A box on a conveyor may travel back and forth through a field of lasers, so tagging it while it’s on the non-deadly side and letting it travel through, then activating the swap, allows you to switch places and not get disintegrated. If an item has a subtle blue outline it’s good to tag with the swapper, but there’s a lot more debris than there is reason to use the ability so you’re able to’t just treat the appearance of random swappable clutter as an indication there’s a puzzle that needs it nearby. Each level is packed with a variety of challenges that require different strategies to get through and getting caught up on one idea is a great way to miss that things are different now.
An early challenge, for example, is a series of platforms on mechanical arms rising and falling in a slow wave pattern, with a laser across the top. The first time you see it the instinct is to jump from one to the next while they’re at the lowest point, which ends up being a terrible idea. After that fails next up is running across, which almost works until the scientist misses a step and is left hanging from the edge of a platform. Turns out using a shallow roll-jump bypasses the whole thing in a few seconds and that’s the last time you’ll see that specific challenge. After that there’s deep pits lined with explosives, slow lasers bouncing off the walls and chasing you between pipes, fast-aimed missiles and slightly-slower homing ones, floating bits of debris to swap places with in order to arrange a safe passage over a long empty pit, bouncing red-hot metal balls and so much more. The machinery of the world is broken but still running, and the only reason it’s not an OSHA Hall of Fame violation is because the inspectors couldn’t survive two steps inside.
Infinite Lives Means Infinite Deaths, But At Least It’s Pretty
That’s becauseBionic Bayis an infinite-life platformer and that means it gets hard quick. The scientist goes down in a single hit but checkpoints come often and restarts are instantaneous, so the difficulty is matched by ease of practice, and once you get a feel for them, precise controls. Few challenges are more than a couple of jumps long, but they can require a good number of attempts plus experimentation to untangle. It also helps when the lives start piling up that the game is gorgeous, with moody lighting that can have everything in silhouette one moment while the next area has a massive window in the background with bright sunlight streaming through revealing every pixel of the art. Each section is monochrome, although only rarely black and white, but the richness of the lighting and detail makes it feel more vibrant than its single-color scenes indicate it should be.
AsBionic Bayprogresses different scientists show up with other abilities. In addition to the swapper there’s the power fist, which sends things flying, plus chronolag, slowing time not quite to a standstill. A massive gap might look like there’s no way across, but turn on chronolag, punch a chunk of debris, hop on and deactivate chronolag to earn a free ride across. There’s also gravity shift, letting you completely redefine what counts as down, but the build I got to play only had one small area where gravity went weird. It did, however, showcase the online mode, which is a time-trail race through chunks of different levels with specific abilities enabled for each. The momentum in the roll move coupled with the use of physics means the speed running community should have plenty to work with while the competitive nature of the multiplayer leaderboards in the daily rotating challenges should help with crackingBionic Bay’s levels wide open.
Bionic Bayis an infinite-life platformer and that means it gets hard quick.
Bionic Bayis its own style of platformer-adventure inspired by the cinematic games likeOddworldandAnother World, but with far more freeform in its controls. The slower parts that let you soak in the atmosphere are balanced by chaotic areas filled with missiles and lasers, and the tone is constantly switching between the two extremes. Even when everything is explosions there’s plenty of eye-candy to make dying easier, with glowing molten metal glooping down an incline or exploding boxes sending particles everywhere. The decayed world ofBionic Bayfeels like its centuries past its prime, but the clanking machinery that’s still operating as it crumbles into pieces makes for a wonderfully-moody world to fail at surviving in.
