Bionic Bay review — An experiment gone terribly right

Announcing your game to the world with a killer trailer is a surefire way to build hype. When Bionic Bay’s announcement trailer was released, it came with a suitcase full of swagger to bite down on, keeping my jaw affixed to the floor. Now, the stylish physics-based platformer is here and it’s an experience you won’t soon forget.

So much of our lives is a mystery. Bionic Bay opens with a team of scientists encamped around what appears to be a giant egg of some sort. Some, like our main protagonist, are plugging data into computers. Others toil away with jackhammers and lasers in an attempt to discover the massive object’s contents. With a few flashes of light and electrical discharge, that all changes. When our scientist (who we’ll call Werner from now on) awakens, he finds himself alone in an inhospitable world. Only through his incredible physical prowess and expert manipulation of the physics-based tools he’ll find, can he dare to discover what’s left of his team and solve his current predicament.

Bionic Bay keeps its narrative pretty tight to its vest. As you adventure, you’ll discover others who’ve gone before you and conveniently left logs of their work along with the occasional scientific tool for Werner to use. Beyond those journal entries, speculation is left to run amok as the environmental storytelling is about all you have left to go on. I would normally find this frustrating but it fits the vibe of the game so well, I actually find it rather endearing. A few major points are eventually resolved while other questions are raised. It gives Bionic Bay’s story an air akin to Inception that will have fans theory-crafting and building headcanon for years. It’s wonderfully executed.

Bionic Bay is one of the freshest puzzle platformers I’ve played in years. In a genre where failing to use great care could destroy the experience, Bionic Bay’s controls are tight and responsive. Stages are built thoughtfully with particular mechanics and obstacles in mind. Thanks to its physics-based nature, the game excels at setting up scenarios with implied solutions and then letting you decide how to solve them.

There are several mechanics you’ll get to play with in your time exploring as Werner. While he’s athletic, jumping and diving alone won’t see him to the end of his journey. Along the way, he’ll find tools that allow swapping himself and another object, the slowing of time, and manipulation of gravity. This allows for some devious mind-bending puzzles that will have you feeling brilliant when you finally reach the other side. Even if you’re struggling to work your way through an area, Bionic Bay has fantastic automatic checkpointing so you’ll rarely lose more than a few steps should something cause your demise. The whole game was designed with function in mind. With excellent puzzles, great checkpointing, and responsive controls, Bionic Bay could end up being a speedrunner’s dream. While the average time I’ve seen for a playthrough estimates about 10 hours, I saw credits in about half that and I anticipate the community will easily get half my time. It’ll be fun to see. 

Bionic Bay features a competitive online mode with racing and time trials. At the time of this review, online functionality was limited to a few ghost-enabled speed run stages. I could see it becoming a feature the community might latch on to. At this time, I can’t offer any more though.

I adore Bionic Bay’s visual direction. It features 2-D sprites with parallax backgrounds that play with depth and color beautifully. Some of the environments are staggering, feeding your eyes with complementary colors sometimes, and simplified single-color palettes in others. The game feels like they heavily adapted inspiration from Sword-and-Sworcery with beautiful, thematic environments. It’s gorgeous yet simplistic. With regards to audio design, the soundtrack is fantastic. Bionic Bay does a great job pumping in the right level of calm or adrenaline with its eerie ambiance and swelling, sci-fi-themed riffs.

What few complaints I have with the game are in its visuals. Werner is small on the screen, which is fine most of the time, but there are moments when you may overlook a handhold or switch that impedes progress. There are times when it’s difficult to distinguish what is foreground and what’s background, too. This led to more than one occasion where I dove into the abyss, thinking I was going to land on a platform that was just a geometric background pattern.