Developer: Bulbware
Publisher: Bulbware
Rrp: £5.99 (Steam) and £7.49 (Humblebundle)
Released: 29th October 2015
Available on: Steam and Humblebundle
Played Using: Mouse
What would you do if your home, that sanctuary against the troubles of the world, became filled with the stuff of nightmares? Everything that you love twisted and contorted to a point where it barely resembles its original form? Would you take on the darkness or cower and hope it all goes away?
Bulb Boy is a point and click adventure game, one that’s quite short and sweet actually. As point and click games go this one is quite simplistic in its
mechanics, you won’t be combining items within your inventory, back
tracking to find the items you left need or solving huge long winded
puzzles. Instead each room you enter will provide you with a new
puzzle as well as everything you need to solve it.
Even though the games imagery is being filtered through a cartoonesque artstyle some of it is still quite disturbing. Almost the entire game is coloured in various shades of green, which adds to the eerie feeling the game has running throughout it.
The music is well chosen, providing an eerie and sometimes discordant sound to the game. Actually the sound effects also provide quite a lot of that disturbed feeling too, with some of them sounding… meaty, for lack of a better word. Imagine the sound of a raw piece of chicken that’s half submerged in water being squeezed, that’s the kind of sound I’m talking about.
The story, character interactions and hints are all told using pictographs and without using any dialogue what so ever (apart from Bulb Boys own nonsense language).
As I mentioned at the beginning of the review this game is sweet but very short. Its very easy to complete this game in a little over two hours. Maybe three if you go looking for every pop culture and gaming reference that’s littered throughout the game. Because of this I’m finding hard to decide whether I should or shouldn’t recommend Bulb Boy. What I can say is that I enjoyed my time with Bulb Boy even if it was over very quickly.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
The Deponia Series
Machinarium
Beneath a Steel Sky
