Co-op Puzzle Platformer with Charming Visuals
BOKURA Game Review (PC)
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BOKURA is a co-operative puzzle platformer about two childhood friends going on an adventure before running away. This indie game manages to deliver a great experience with its story driven narrative and surprisingly amazing puzzles. With its short playtime of four to five hours, is BOKURA worth it? Would I recommend this to friends or couples looking for another co-op puzzle platformer?
BOKURA starts with players reflecting on their childhood. Remembering aspects of your young life such as playing Pakémon with one person: your best friend. You start reflecting more deeply on that particular day and your guys’ final adventure together. You guys made arrangements to meet the following day to blow up the town’s statue and skip town. The game sets you on this path and you have to work together to solve puzzles to reach the statue.
As you move along in BOKURA’s story, it starts to get weird. Suddenly, the perspectives start to change. What one player can see, the other can’t. The main “gimmick” of BOKURA is one player will have a storybook setting featuring animals while the other player will have robots in a steampunk setting. The game’s level design becomes slightly modified between both players, so they have to work together more closely if they wish to finish BOKURA.
The story feels like a visual novel at times. With the amount of speech bubbles and text flying on screen, it can feel tiresome for certain players. However, it does deliver an interesting narrative. I liked what BOKURA presented in its story.
It’s about two childhood friends reflecting on what this adventure was like for them. During your playthrough, both players will experience story details on their own and should not say anything to the other person as it’s happening. Afterwards, you can discuss but a decision is usually followed up that both players have to agree on. The choices do change the narrative slightly but from my understanding, it’s mostly the same at the end of BOKURA.
The visual novel elements make cutscenes go for as long as 10 minutes if you’re reading all the dialogue. It’s kind of fun having the other player read along with you. Maybe even voice acting to get into the spirit of things. I know these elements aren’t for everyone but I enjoyed reading BOKURA’s narrative.
The gameplay is by far where BOKURA shines the most. Like I said before, the main “gimmick” is having both players’ perspectives be slightly different in the level design. The reliance on each other is immense and communication is key in solving BOKURA’s many puzzle platforming challenges. BOKURA does not feature local co-op because sometimes the player will be completely off-screen solving a different puzzle. Also, it would be hard to implement two different perspectives locally. Because of this, both players need their own copy of BOKURA to play the game together (more on this later).
You can jump, push objects, and climb ledges to advance puzzles. Trial and error is key, so don’t be afraid to try puzzles over again. Falling too high up or jumping into water will result in a death, restarting from the last checkpoint. It can get frustrating, especially the puzzles later on. You can also restart a puzzle at any time, whether you accidentally soft-locked the puzzle or a glitch happened. Resetting at any time is encouraged in BOKURA.
My only major complaint with the gameplay is the lack of a hint system. I know, it’s an indie puzzle platformer, so a system like this would require more time. But a simple prompt to guide us along harder puzzles would’ve been nice. In addition, sometimes, BOKURA just doesn’t tell you certain things are required to advance.
For example, there’s a puzzle where one of the players’ head gets cut off. Because of this, you now need to guide them through all the platforming challenges because they literally can’t see. That’s a fine challenge that really makes both players communicate with one another. Our problem came when we didn’t carry the dismembered head with us. This really hindered our playthrough because we had to travel back to grab the head and re-do all the platforming challenges again.
It would’ve been nice if the puzzle requiring us to throw the head on the button came sooner, so we didn’t have to travel back 10–15 minutes to re-do everything. Other than that, the level design and puzzles in BOKURA are good.
Both players are challenged to work together to solve these puzzles. Trial and error is fine as there’s no punishment attempting puzzles over and over again. Most of the puzzles are not easy to solve but once you do figure it out, it feels awesome. My girlfriend and I had a lot of fun playing BOKURA, even though we wanted to kill each other at certain points of the playthrough.
The presentation of BOKURA is nice. The pixel art style works extremely well. I really liked the colors used in the animal storybook setting. I did not experience the robotic perspective but the sprite work still looks great all around. The music is pleasant, never feeling out of place for the narrative.
Glitches will happen every now and then but a simple reset fixes them. Even then, I only had two or three glitches occur during my playthrough. The online play is smooth for the most part. Feel free to pick the game back up from the last checkpoint by re-inputting a new code. I only had lag occur when we went back into BOKURA after a small break. After playing for like 20 minutes, the online became smooth once again.
Players are required to purchase two copies of the game as there’s no Friend’s Pass like It Takes Two. According to the Steam Reviews, it was in the beta but was taken out after the game fully released. They did half the price of the game to $5.49, so that was their compromise.
In the Steam Update post ver.0.9.0, the Friend’s Pass became more difficult than expected to make for multiple platforms. Instead of trying to resolve the issue, as they are small team, the devs decided to scrap the pass all together and chop the price of the game in half. It sucks but it is what it is. I wish early access players got an additional code for their Player 2 instead of having to spend more money on a second copy.
On the bright side, cross-play is enabled for BOKURA. Anyone who has a copy on Steam, Nintendo Switch, or iOS/Android can play with each other. With the popularization of cross-play in gaming, this is a great feature.
All in all, BOKURA manages to deliver unique puzzle platforming challenges and an interesting narrative. The gameplay is fun as both players have to talk and work together to get challenges done. The story is engaging as the childhood friends reflect on this adventure. The online play feels very responsive as long as both players have stable internet connections.
The required purchase of two copies does suck but the game is only $5.49 on Steam and Nintendo Switch. I understand I received BOKURA for free but for $12, you’re getting a co-op puzzle platformer that lasts about four to six hours long. Not a terrible price especially if you’re looking for something to play over the weekend. We played the game on PC and it ran completely fine. If you’re looking for a required co-op puzzle platformer game, BOKURA is right up your alley.
Travis “tvsonic” Vuong
Business e-mail: travisvuong56@gmail.com
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