The Journey: Bob's Story. Demo

It’s pretty tough to make exploration fun in a video game, unless you have a powerful graphics engine at your disposal to keep the players distracted with all sorts of shiny objects. On the other hand, creativity goes a long way, so it’s a lot easier to get people interested if the environments are intriguing and well-designed.

The Journey: Bob's Story. is an interestingly looking platformer in which you play the role of Bob, a simple guy trying to find his friend. As you may probably notice from the first minutes of gameplay, the visual style is very similar to Limbo, the great indie platformer released a few years ago. In fact, it looks pretty much the same, except that it’s not as polished as the original.

The story is pretty disorienting as well, since nothing makes too much sense at first, mainly because there are so many grammar and syntax mistakes. Hence, it would appear that your job is to leave the village and see what’s out there, and maybe even find your friend. However, no one ever returned after leaving the village, so your journey could be very dangerous.

Most of the levels are pretty linear and boring, but there are junctions every now and again that allow you to pick a direction instead. Some of these roads go upwards, or are inaccessible for some reason, on the other hand. Thankfully, you’ll quickly stumble upon a jetpack, which allows you to fly for short periods of times and reach even the most secluded peaks.

The gimmick gets old pretty fast, unfortunately, because the stages are just too barren to be any fun. There’s nothing in them except for the occasional gap or water hole, so boredom sets in rather quickly. The art style is way too reminiscent of Limbo, so you’ll often have higher expectations than the game is able to provide.

When it’s all said and done, The Journey: Bob's Story. could have done a lot more with the elements at its disposal. Instead, it’s just a cheap Limbo clone with little to no atmosphere and boring level design.