For some reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about classic platformers lately — and what made them good. When it comes to the lifespan of this hobby, they’re pretty important. Many people can trace their earliest forays into gaming to a pivotal platformer. Whether it’s Super Mario, Banjo-Kazooie or even Bubsy, it usually comes down to the movement. The best platformers always—through some combination of sound, visuals and sheer feeling—make the basic act of navigating their world fun. That said, Bionic Bay has some really fun movement.
“Bionic Bay has some really fun movement.”
It’s not your typical movement, though. Sure, Bionic Bay gets the essentials out of the way early. The first level functions as an expanded tutorial on how the game handles momentum and air dashes—so much so that the powerful “roll, jump, air dash” combo becomes second nature. Players are quickly thrust into complex platforming and puzzle challenges that demand some real outside-the-box thinking. However, movement becomes fast very quickly, and your rolls and jumps are both extremely floaty, making the whole thing feel more like drunkenly careening through tight jumps and laser beams. It’s intoxicating.
These puzzles can be devilishly smart, no matter how over the top they may be. Early on, players gain access to a swap power. Essentially, you slap an eligible object, go about your business, and then later swap positions with the object you previously tagged. The possibilities with such an ability are immediately fascinating.
Soon after acquiring it, players encounter a tram loaded with boxes and must dash ahead of the tram to deactivate lasers by swapping boxes onto pressure plates — all while the whole contraption is in motion. Also, the front of the tram is a bomb, so don’t touch it! The powers only get more outrageous from there, with time manipulation, world rotation and massive punches all on the table. They mesh together to create some truly mind-bending chaos.
“Bionic Bay is lovely to look at.”
Yet so much of Bionic Bay is designed to kill you. Lasers, rockets, saw blades, little melting embers that bark and lunge at you, and so many bombs lurk around every corner, and just nicking one of them will result in a player’s death. Fortunately, checkpoints are plentiful and reloading is extremely fast, so players aren’t out of the action for too long. Still, it can be frustrating to keep banging your head against a puzzle, but trial and error is part of the process.
Bionic Bay is lovely to look at. The backgrounds are all lusciously rendered, with great lighting effects and striking depth. The player character looks a little odd — more pixelated than anything else — and their animations are often quirky. Their limbs tend to ragdoll, with their limp frame getting tossed around, making me think I was dead many times when I wasn’t. But that fits with the game’s ridiculous puzzles and bizarre sense of humour.
There is some story to Bionic Bay, but not much. A giant egg appears, a scientist tries to do science on it, and everyone ends up transported somewhere bad. It’s little more than a framework for wild platforming puzzles and weird abilities — and that’s really all it needs to be.
