The Legend of Bumbo came out a while ago.
I love me some Binding of Isaac. But it was distinctly not that. Some kind of puzzle game or game show-based thing? I put it on my wishlist because it was in the "Isaac Universe" but didn't have any real intentions of getting it. Just didn't seem quite like my game. I tend not to go for Puzzler games liike Bejeweled and what not.
And therefore a friend got it for me for Xmas.
It is......a strange beast.
You play Bumbo, a minor character from the Binding of Isaac. Bumbo want coin. Bumbo's brother take coin. Bumbo get coin back.
Gameplay is a combination of several different things.
You have a dungeon with multiple rooms, with enemies in them, a shop and eventually a boss.
Kill all the monsters in a room, automatically move to the next. Clear all the rooms, fight the boss.
To fight guys, first, you get a tile matching grid. Each tile represents some kind of move. Bones and Teeth are attacks, Snot and Poop steal enemy moves or block their attacks respectively, Piss gives you an extra action. By default you get two actions to shift tiles on the grid around. Match up at least 4 tiles, and you get an "attack" you can do.
Meanwhile, above the tile grid are enemies in 3 x 4 space. There's guys in the back ranks, guys in the front ranks and they can move forward, use ranged attacks, special abilities and so forth.
You match tiles on the grid to get you attacks, which you then use on the enemies in the battle space to knock down their HP or delay them. Once you use up all your moves and take all your actions, the enemies go, then you go, etc....
On top of all this is the "Spell" system. Bumbo has a few spells that run off of "Mana" that correspond to the tiles you matched. So if you match 4 Bone tiles, not only do you get an attack to do against the enemies in the battle space, you get 4 Bone Mana to cast one of your spells with. You can have up to 5 spells, some of which are passive buffs or buffs with cooldowns or actual attacks, and you can find new spells in the shops as you progress.
It's a lot to juggle. Making the right choices on the Tile Grid is the meat of gameplay, but beyond that, knowing where to throw your attacks for max effectiveness, or which spells would help you the most, makes for a ton of decision making turn per turn. With the right cascade of clearing tiles, you can go from doing maybe 2 attacks and one spell on your turn, to doing 5 or 6 or 7.
There's multiple types of Bumbo each with their own stats and set of starting spells, all very carefully geared toward a particular mechanic. Regular Bumbo has a spell that completely re-rolls the tile grid, while Nimble Bumbo has a spell that selectively destroys one tile on the grid, allowing you to semi-game the grid and try to get the tiles you want.
In the BoI style, each win you get with a Bumbo unlocks a new dungeon to progress through, and a new Bumbo to try out.
Bosses tend to be more like puzzles where they do specific things and you have to figure out the best way to win against their variety of mechanic, whether that's regeneration or damage negation or what have you.
I didn't expect to get very far in to the game, but 5 hours later I found myself with over half the Bumbo's unlocked and several wins under my belt.
I haven't actually lost a game yet. What seems like a crazy amount of variables to juggle is actually quite manageable as long as you really think before you act and really pay attention to the tile grid and your spells to get the most out of every turn you can. Bumbo's abilities are quite powerful when used correctly.
Between the very strange "cardboard cutout" visual style, Ridiculon's music and some very over the top voice acting by Ridiculon, it comes across as a very odd duck of a game. And yet for all that, it's got some depth and some carefully thought out gameplay.
I can't say it's "as good as Binding of Isaac" because they are two very different games despite the visuals and content bits looking very similar between them. There's enemies and items from BoI you'll recognize by sight if not by function. Playing LoB though I sort of felt an absence of a goal or something to work towards. In BoI it was very apparent. Tons of unlocks and secrets to be found, lots of characters to unlock, bosses to get better at fighting and eventually beat. LoB doesn't seem to have that same loop. There's not really any unlocks to speak of other than new Bumbos or levels, and not being particularly challenged didn't entice me to play aggressively like I did with BoI. I'm sure there's more bosses to work toward fighting like Mom or the Devil. It's just LoB doesn't feel like this vast web of content quite like BoI did, even when it first released.
All it all it's not a bad little puzzler game, and if you're wanting more stuff in the BoI universe but don't feel the desire to actually play BoI, LoB is a reasonable substitute.
Author
Topic: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads. (Read 328805 times)