Ever since playing Polara last year, I have come to like games that feature the color polarity changing mechanic. Last week, I came across one such game called Bobbing while traversing the lower reaches of the Top New Paid chart on Google Play. Curious, I bought it to see how it worked. And boy I’ve come away impressed.
Name: Bobbing | Developer: Littlebobby Games | Category: Platform | Players: 1 | Version: 1.0 | Size: 31 MB | Price: Free / $0.99 |
Like Polara, Bobbing is a game that’d screw around with your mind and make you lose your bearings. The game is fiendishly difficult, but the controls are easy – tap on the left side to switch the direction in which gravity acts and on the right to switch polarity. What you essentially need to do is reverse gravity and switch polarity to clear the levels (which number a whopping 86 in total).
So actually, this game gives you double the dosage. Instead of just figuring out the right color to be on, you must device on the direction of the gravity field too (this is the more prevalent element in the game). Trying to figure out where’s up and down, and what color to be on amid the intense action is really confusing and it’ll take you quite some time to get used to it, if you ever do that is.
The action takes place in a circular disc-like platform that spins along as you make your way past the obstacles. The obstacles here mainly consist of fire pits (touch them and you die) and colored gates that you pass through if you’re on the right color.
Then there are other elements such as portals, reflectors and bouncers which add value to the game design. Figuring out how to utilize them to your advantage in a given level will take many tries, and they add a puzzle-like nature to the game. For perfectionists, there are bonus pieces to collect on each level. To get a perfect score, you need to have zero “negative degree” and collect all the bonus pieces.
You meet instant death once you touch a fire pit or have too much of “negative degree” (which essentially means you get stuck on an obstacle). Once you die, you restart all over again, which to be frank can be demoralizing at times. But it’s actually pretty cool to die in the game because the death animation (you burst into pixel dust) is awesome and the way the disc rotates back to the starting position and the sound restarts is reminiscent of the way vinyl players work.
The presentation here is great, and there’s a lot of energy in the electronic soundtrack that the game has. The graphics are simple and the main color theme is grey, but yet there is so much color and everything blends in well. The fast-paced action never skips a beat, and performance is smooth sailing.
Conclusion:
Bobbing can be really frustrating at times as you die over and over while trying to complete a level, but that’s the nature of the beast. It is also meant to be played in moderation as it can get quite taxing on your brain. But the exuberant audio-visual experience, and above all the varied, creative and punishing level design present in Bobbing makes it worth a purchase. Currently, Bobbing hasn’t got much attention, but I reckon it’d get a cult following soon enough.
Overall rating: 4/5
