Despite the fact that I am, and forever will be, uncoordinated in every aspect of life... for some reason, the 3D Platformer, or just Platformers in general at this point, are quickly becoming one of our most reviewed game genres. It's probably because we’ve done a few now that developers trust that we’re experienced enough to provide thorough and thoughtful feedback on them… and, that much is true. We've grown to love them more than we care to admit and recent titles such as After Us & Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara have only heightened our love for it. This is exactly why we'd been keeping our eyes on Boti: Byteland Overclocked as it was promising to be a charming new entry to the genre. Its trailer featured bright colors, cute characters, and tons of charm, so when I opened our email inbox and saw a coverage request from their team? Well, I was over the moon that I wasn’t going to have to have a panic attack writing another coverage request email and waiting quite impatiently for a response. Instead, I got the privilege of responding to them with a resounding YES!
We’re happy to report that excitement for the title remains even after beating the game, and while we did experience a few small hiccups along the way, it’s undeniably a great addition to the genre.
For those that haven’t heard of Boti: Byteland Overclocked it’s a 3D Platformer in which you get to explore the awesomely stylized insides of a computer with Boti and save Byteland from an ominous threat. The best part is you can play it with a friend for twice the fun. But… enough with the fluff, let’s jump into it!
Don’t want to read? Video Review Coming Soon!
Watch the Trailer:
Story: Boti has to save Byteland
While most Platformers offer decent bits of story to give the world life and offer you a reason to keep moving forward, level-based titles tend to opt out of heavy story aspects and focus on the gameplay instead. We’re happy to report that Boti does quite the opposite. In fact, I have a hard time classifying it as a level-based Platformer to begin with.
There are indeed 8 levels that follow the story of Boti, a little robot inside the heart of a computer that’s going haywire. It’s up to you to get to the bottom of what’s wrong with the computer you call home and put everything back in order. From the power supply, graphics card, network adapter, and more, the levels are all cleverly designed to give you the feel of going through an actual computer. The levels aren’t designed to be 3-5 minute areas you dash around through, collect some items, and see if you can beat your best time. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It truly feels as though the levels are separated more specifically for the story.
What do I mean? Well, we’ll break the gameplay down in that section, but each level pertains to a different part of the computer, and a different section of the story, so the way the game feels and plays is as though these levels are only really there to segment the story and offer you breaks once you’ve completed a long stretch, rather than focusing on tons of short maps and timers. It made the game and story feel exceptionally fluid and it's the most a story has felt immersive in a platformer in a while. The nature of the genre warrants a bit of immersion breaking if you opt-in for short levels and a level select system, but Boti trades that speed-running aspect for some playful story sections that kept me invested in the game even as we approached the end of it.
Gameplay: Byte Hoarding & Puzzle-Solving
As I mentioned briefly above, instead of a game catered towards those with insane parkour skills who can somehow burst through a 5-minute level in 7.689 seconds, Boti chose to offer an experience that allows you to focus on the exploration of the levels and finding each hidden secret or unlockable skin. You’ll be able to jump, slide, and launch yourself off magnets to find everything the levels have to offer.
Honestly? It’s such a nice change of pace from the recent stressful platformers I’ve played. You don’t feel that normal stress of a clock ticking down in the upper corner of your screen when you’re going through the levels, and as someone who greatly prefers open-world RPGs that leave me to my own devices, it’s a breath of fresh air in the genre for sure. I guess that’s the beauty of meshing the word “Puzzle” next to platformer, as, that’s exactly what Boti is, a game that focuses far more on crafting fun puzzles you’ll have to figure out in order to unlock the worlds secrets, then timers and speed runs. Fear not, there’s still a “time” based on the entire level and a set amount of collectible objects, so if you enjoy that play style, it still exists in the game. The devs get extra kudos for catering to two player bases.
Since Boti does still offer 8 levels, even if they’re untraditionally long, that begs the question, what exists outside the levels? Well, a fun oasis full of side activities to keep you entertained. From musical slides, to bot coins to find and collect, to upgrades that you can spend your bytes on and increase the amount of activities available. To round it all out, you can take a stroll through your little house and customize Boti with any of the skins you’ve collected during the levels, or unlocked via achievements.
The big thing that we want to talk about, and what you’re probably wondering most in terms of the gameplay, is the actual feel of the controls and platforming in the game. We want to immediately premise that we’ve died in Boti far less than most platformers. While there are absolutely parts where you’ll need some coordination to reach a certain secret, I found it far less stressful to complete these puzzles and get to said secrets, than in most games. I want to clarify that I don’t think that made Boti “easier” than other titles in the genre. In fact, there were multiple parts where you’ll need to properly manage 2-3 keys, and correctly combo them in a quick manner to get to a special place, so it absolutely takes some coordination. That being said, we’re offering Boti a huge compliment in the fact that everything felt achievable and not “stressful” the way others have made us feel recently. There wasn’t a single point while maneuvering Boti that it felt clunky or awkward. Even for the puzzles that lock you in a side-scrolling perspective, I found all of them to be achievable. Which, I admittedly struggle with side-perspectives the most, so, a win there.
There's an added bonus in that if, for whatever reason, you feel as though the keys or bindings don't make sense, you can change them. A+ for accessibility. You'd think it couldn't get better until you realize that they also implemented a scanning system that allows Boti to do a quick survey of the area to highlight certain points of interest and secrets, as well as enemies. This aided us drastically when searching for those hard-to-find skins so we could turn Boti into Bee-Boti and buzz towards all the digital flowers gleefully (lol).
One last thing we want to bring up is the combat. There's tons of it in the game and while I tend to get stressed when combat is brought up in general, I have to say none of the combat felt necessarily hard, even when presented with a few of the boss fights. There are a few points where you might get the feeling of being overwhelmed due to there being multiple enemies around you, but honestly, nothing felt out of place, over-complicated, or overly challenging. In fact, I found it quite fun as most of the mobs are easy to take down and offer a way to keep you engaged during some of the slower parts of the levels.
Visuals & Audio: The inner workings of a PC
If you've seen a trailer, or any gameplay footage of Boti really, you might know by now that it offers beautiful visuals. The levels are colorfully decorated and exceptionally detailed with tons of items to admire, objects to break, and NPCs to interact with. The sounds while doing so fit the world we were in wonderfully and the music was lively and matched the theme of the story and gameplay perfectly. The music stayed on and we vibed out to it the entire playthrough, which if you know me, is always a double thumbs up.
We actually felt completely absorbed into Boti with the wonderful blend of everything. It’s probably one of the most immersive titles we’ve played in a while in terms of story flow, gameplay balance, controls being responsive and fluid, and lastly, the visuals and audio tying it all in together.
There was one big thing that… we as The Pillow Fort, and the premise we’ve set for our channel being an honest one, have to share, despite our pure enjoyment of this game.
Okay... but what's bad and boring?
That leads us to this section, and I’m happy to report that I was not bored at ANY point during Boti. What I said previously holds true even going into this section… BUT there were 2 things that I’d consider a problem.
The first one, and this one’s the more minor one so we’ll talk about it first, but the controls for the cart driving segments felt exceptionally rough. In every other portion of the game, we found the controls to be forgiving and achievable, even if it took us an attempt or two… or three... but as you get halfway through level 6, you’re not only piloting a hard-to-control cart through the driving portion, but avoiding holes in the floor, and “glitches” that will launch you off the platform. I got to about attempt 30 before telling Ducky I was one attempt from giving up, ready to hand it off to him to try. I drove incredibly slowly… which… ironically made the controls feel worse… and managed to get past the bridge. It didn’t feel good and it didn’t feel fun. I was frustrated and I can’t sit here and say I’m bad at driving games.
Ironically… one of the largest titles I played with my Dad growing up was Need for Speed, and I’ve played every Forza game since 3. I’m not inept with a driving system in any way but the way the controls of the cart in Boti felt was as though someone had the permanent drift stick on. It was impossible for me not to be bouncing into the walls and off of spiky objects. Which, admittedly was totally fine until level 6… and holes plus things that launched me off were added in and then the controls became a HUGE problem, insanely fast. So, if I have 1 and only 1 suggestion for improving the gameplay of Boti, it would be the cart controls.
Now… the second thing that felt rough… and this one is absolutely fixable in a patch or two so I’m asking you to take a huge grain of salt with this, was the amount of bugs we were faced with. Admittedly, most of the levels were fluid and bug-free, but, as you reach the later ones, with 5 being the worst, you’ll run into random holes in the floor that will have you falling into oblivion, or objects will seemingly disappear and reappear when you’re in a certain spot. We had one we particularly enjoyed where Boti’s little wings were spasming out during a cutscene. It was harmless and made us laugh, but a bug nonetheless.
We did our job as good samaritans and put together an entire bug reel so they can have physical proof of exactly what was happening and where, so we imagine these bugs may not even exist for you during your experience, and considering they pushed out 3 patches in the time that we had Early Access, we’re absolutely confident that by a week or 2 past launch, this game should be a 99.9% fluid, bug-free experience.
But tell me... is it worth it?
Boti: Byteland Overclocked is currently $25 on Steam, and, honestly? If you’re a fan of the Puzzle Platformer genre and want a fun 3D experience in Unreal Engine 5 with beautiful graphics and great gameplay with a boppin' soundtrack, then yes, it’s our belief that the game is worth it. This is going to be a high compliment and, despite the bugs, I’m still giving it, but if we had paid for Boti we wouldn’t have been disappointed with the purchase.
The bugs that exist present a problem when justifying the price, however, if you factor in their 20% launch discount and the fact that these bugs won’t exist past a week or two, it balances that aspect out.
To top it off, you get a long story that's well-fleshed out and comedic, with fun gameplay that keeps you engaged and searching for secrets. It offers things to do in between levels, and unlockables to customize your experience even further. Best yet? You can play it with friends.
To end this section we’ll state who we believe should avoid this game. The first are those who just don’t enjoy Platformers, especially 3D or puzzle-related. Second, if you have a lower-end PC, please check out the minimum specs required to run this game as it is an Unreal Engine 5 title that asked a bit more than your average Indie game from my PC. Lastly, the only other people we think should avoid this are those who want a seamless, bug-free experience. Put it on your wishlist and leave it there for 2-4 weeks, check the patch notes, and then pick it up when your budget allows, because it was exceptionally fun.
Conclusion: Pillow Fort APPROVED
All-in-all, we’re awarding Boti: Byteland Overclocked with the official Pillow Fort Stamp of Approval. We’ll be monitoring the patch notes so go follow our Twitter page as we post 99% of game updates and information related to upcoming games, new releases, and patch notes there.
We want to once again thank the Developers for the opportunity to review it, we can definitely see us sharing this experience with our kiddos in the future, so it’s a game that will remain active in our Steam inventory for sure.
That’s going to be it for this review, but make sure you leave it a like if you enjoyed and tell us what you think of Boti in the comments. Please feel free to ask any and all questions, we'd be happy to answer them!
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Disclaimer:
Please note that while we did receive this game for free, we have not been paid or promoted for this review, and are not affiliated with Boti: Byteland Overclocked or its developers officially in any way. All thoughts are based on our own genuine experience of the game. All footage is based on the Game in its current state as of 09/18/2023 and is subject to change or be completely omitted in future patches at the developer's discretion.
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