Bob Help Them (Nintendo Switch) Review

The conceit of Bob Help Them is simple: you're Bob, and you must help people. A variety of townsfolk need Bob to complete some simple tasks, whether it be picking apples, baking pies, smelting ore, or petting doggos. Each task takes a certain amount of time, with apples needing to regrow, food needing to be cooked, ore needing to be smelted, and so on. Couple that with an omnipresent time limit to complete one's tasks, and these simple chores become a challenge of time management and efficiency.

This simple gameplay loop is more addictive than one would think. There are only 35 levels in this short little package, but each can take up quite a bit of time to master. Trial and error is basically essential, as players will need to familiarize themselves with each map to figure out the most efficient route. Completing a level is only a part of the challenge, as players can also try to reach a 3-Star rank in each level, a spectacularly difficult ordeal in certain missions.

This does often run into the issue of not giving the player enough information, however. There is no way to easily view a list of tasks that still need to be completed in a mission, instead forcing players to waste valuable seconds and trek back to the task-giver. Recipes for specific items are easily accessible through pausing, so other important notices being there could have highly mitigated this annoyance. Likewise, having to continually restart missions to familiarize oneself with the map is also a waste of time. There really should have been an option to view a map in its entirety before even starting, preventing that extra roadblock.

In general, Bob Help Them feels like it cut a few corners in areas that could have used more variety. Every map has the same aesthetic of a generic grassland, with a pixelated art style that looks fine, but a bit generic. It doesn't do much to stand out from the many other simplistic pixel art indie games out there. Additionally, the controls could use some polish, as trying to grab a specific item among a pile of discarded ones is much harder than it should be.