Back to Bed (PC) Second Opinion Review

By Thom Compton 21.05.2016

Review for Back to Bed on PC

Spatial puzzle games are becoming more and more popular. Just by eschewing the orientation of an important item, goal, or even the player themselves, the mind is able to venture into whole new places. Back to Bed (previously covered at Cubed3 here) uses an expressionist approach to level design - a criminally underused art style in games - in order to tap into the mind in new and exciting ways.

Just to look at Back to Bed's Dali-esque art style is enthralling. The landscape is bereft of certainty, instead choosing to eschew convention and aim for a universe where, at least in terms of physics, everything goes. Since the bizarre world plays so heavily into the gameplay, it is imperative that the player truly understands how the environment works.

Puzzle games of this variety (i.e. Portal) are often engaging because they require more than just an understanding of the central mechanic. They also require an astute observation of how that mechanic affects the world. Of course, this is all relevant to just traversing each level, as the player will often need to defy gravity and walk up the side of walls or the like in order to grab what they need to solve each puzzle.

The central mechanic is that you, a man-faced dog, must lead sleepwalking Bob back to his bed without letting him fall off the side of the structure you're standing on. This is performed by placing objects in his way in an effort to guide him in another direction. By doing this with enough skill, the player can eventually lead Bob back to his bed, and onto the next chilling landscape.

Screenshot for Back to Bed on PC

Back to Bed falls into an odd category of puzzle game, in that when it works, it's fantastic, and when it doesn't, it's dreadful. Early on, you will be introduced to a fast-forward button, which is more about getting the end result of your actions on screen. Bob is a terribly slow walker, so being able to speed up the events is fantastic.

Unfortunately, when a decision turns out to be wrong, it's really just a wonderful way to throw Bob to his death. Fortunately, he will just reload at the start of the level. This may sound convenient, but it comes with the price of having to re-direct Bob back to where he messed up. Not only does this prove tedious with the more difficult puzzles, it also means you aren't spending time figuring out the piece you are stuck on. This repetition is the puzzle game equivalent of unskippable cutscenes prior to hard bosses, forcing you to listen to the same dialog over and over again, ad nauseam.

The sense of elation when a puzzle is solved is tremendous, and very often, the solution is fairly simple. The game comes undone when it requires multiple correct answers in a row. While these challenges should be fun, they end up being tedious. It results in something no game designer should want: the player will just be trying to get to the end of the game so that it's not filling their backlog.

Screenshot for Back to Bed on PC

Cubed3 Rating

6/10
Rated 6 out of 10

Good

When it works, it's amazing, and when it fails, it does so with the grace of a fallen swan. While Back to Bed is a festival of interesting structures, it fails to use them for fundamentally enjoyable puzzles. Instead, it relishes in the player repeating tasks over and over again, to the point that the whole effect is numbing. If you enjoy extreme repetition, you will find something here. For anyone else, sleep on it.

Developer

Bedtime Digital

Publisher

Bedtime Digital Games

Genre

Puzzle

Players

1

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  7/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date Out now   Australian release date Out now   

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