Developer: Jan Zizka
Publisher: Jan Zizka
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
The Adventures of Mr. Bobley – Review
Passing up a Bob the Builder reference when reviewing this game is like passing up a pay check rise. Too good of an opportunity to do so. So ‘Can we fix it?’ depends, what do you want to fix? There are some things that will make you cock an eyebrow but nothing short of a full overhaul would fix what’s currently the main annoyance when playing the game. The Adventures of Mr. Bobley are coded in Unity. A great engine in the right hands, a wrecking ball in the hands of others.
Story
The epic quests of Mr. Bobley starts when the blue prints of a very important site have gone missing. Mr. Bobley takes this very seriously and doesn’t just send anyone off to find them, he goes on the journey himself. A journey which is a very lonely one, because the only things you’ll be interacting with are cold, uncaring construction tools and vehicles. There isn’t much of a personal growth when it comes to ‘The Adventures of Mr. Bobley.’ Then again the delay of a building site hangs in the balance, not the fate of the earth. Or is it?
Don’t think you’ll be surprised by a deep, rich, moving plot with twists and turns and a narrative so rich every second is a revelation. Not every game benefits from plot grandure, but giving Mr. Bobley some sort of personality would have been nice. It’s so bad that even when he falls from great heights and he dies, or the game just plainly states you’ve failed the level, you’re not even the slightest bit concerned for Mr. Bobley. The fall clearly breaks his legs and yet you couldn’t feel more distraught over his demise. He’s about as cool and uncaring a tool as the things he manoeuvres.
Graphics
When you think Unity, the graphics are usually limited, and with a game only 129 megabyte big, you can’t expect a graphically detailed game. Which is fine, as the graphics don’t tell the whole story. It is however when things don’t act as they should, that the suspension of disbelief comes into play and mucks up what could have been a rather fun couple of hours.
Crates don’t drop down and bounce up like balls of fluff, cinderblocks and metal balls in the back of a van don’t jump out and become near weightless and float to the ground at what seems zero gravity. Steel girders don’t float downward as they normally slam down, fast and hard, which doesn’t happen. Sitting there and being unable to predict the movement of objects in a physics based game is about as entertaining as infiltrating a wasp nest, naked, head first.
Sound
This is a fickle one. There is no voice acting whatsoever and even the sounds in the game don’t know what side they are on. At one point in the game you might be listening to an upbeat tune, which repeats and loops until it drives you insane, and then all of a sudden the music dies away. It comes and goes like people at a self-service food buffet.
On the other hand, the actual sound effects are quite decent. They aren’t anything innovative, but at least they do the job well. There is however one slight little sound that sets the hairs on my neck standing whenever it happens. When you fall from a great height and land without pressing spacebar. You’ll hear an audible snapping sound, which indicates Mr. Bobley’s heels, knees and legs have been broken. This is disturbing. It’s horrifying once you pay attention to it. He doesn’t even cry out. People in shock don’t cry out when they are in pain. A great way to get into shock is breaking every bone in your lower body. Either he’s in shock or he’s that much of a badass…
Gameplay
The Adventures of Mr. Bobley is a physic based puzzle game and it also incorporates platform elements. The controls of the game are a bit of a mess though. There’s the arrow keys you can use to move, or the W,A,S,D. That is if you have set your keyboard to the English setting. Also movement can be done by clicking and holding your mouse to a certain point. Mr. Bobley will try to comply and run to that point. The camera will move and Mr. Bobley will walk until you release the button. Page up and Page down make you move between floors when in an elevator, while right control makes you jump and left control exits vehicles and some commands are executed by clicking.
This poses a problem because when you combine movement and command execution with clicking, things go awry. Mr. Bobley moves whenever you click the command and this might move you out of the way of the command. It messes with the flow of the game. Certain puzzles can be brute forced, these instances are rather limited so it’s no big offender, and surely the player only punishes him or herself by omitting certain parts of the game.
Spacebar makes you tuck and roll, which can save Mr. Bobley from a fall from great heights. If you tumble down and tuck in time, it might be that the game doesn’t tell you that you’ve failed the level. This is the moment where you can get back up to where you were. That is one of the few consistencies the game has. Failing the level means you get to do the whole stage over.
This also means getting stuck on a physics puzzle because you’ve run out of items to use. Stages are mercifully short, but as the game progresses the puzzles become more and more difficult in execution as they are in comprehension. Knowing the solution is far easier than actually getting it to happen.
Conclusion
The Adventures of Mr. Bobley could have been a very amusing puzzle game, but the physics hold it down. The gameplay is easy and the controls, though they might take a little getting used to, are concise and reactive. The platforming sections are easy to navigate and you are given rather a large leeway when you are traversing seemingly tight quarters. It’s a cheap game that has some great ideas, but doesn’t Miley Cirus’ things up by coming in like a wrecking ball.
The Adventures of Mr. Bobley - Review,
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