Bionic Bay was provided by Kepler Interactive for review. Thank you!
Platformers are some of the best games on the Steam Deck, thanks to their ease of running and compatibility with a controller. There are a few platformers that stand out, though. Celeste, Antonblast, and INSIDE are all a joy to play, but Bionic Bay may be joining the list. Not only is it very competent in its gameplay, but it also feels innovative and exciting, challenging the player to find unique ways to solve its puzzles. After my playthrough, I can confidently say this was one of my favorite platformers I have ever played.
If I had to explain Bionic Bay, I would say it has a similar aesthetic to LIMBO, with most of the game showing black outlines of locations and your player character, and fast-paced platforming like if Celeste and Sonic the Hedgehog had a baby and added in physics-based objects and puzzles. It's chaotic in all the right ways, finding a nice balance between being too difficult and distracting and too easy and straightforward, most of the time.
Like most 2D platformers, you will go from one end of the level to the other, and while this usually means horizontal or vertical movement, Bionic Bay utilizes every direction. You will jump sideways to dodge lasers, climb chains to escape balls of fire, and more. It's quite clear where to go next and is more on the linear side of progression, but it feels so exciting thanks to the powers you get to manipulate the physics-based world and its puzzles.
As you continue, you will unlock different crazy powers to help you manipulate the world. These include abilities like swapping places with objects you tag or pushing objects around with enormous force. The powers are all quite intriguing and help serve an actual purpose, which can be used to manipulate the world. To get through lasers, you may need to jump over the laser and swap places with a sheet of metal, or to destroy a bomb in front of you, you may have to push a crate into it. These become essential to solving puzzles, and there will be some quick thinking involved, such as where you need to figure out on the fly whether you need to swap and when.
I loved these moments. It felt engaging and packed with action, thanks to how fast-paced the game is. The developers, Psychoflow Studio and Mureena Oy, wanted to keep speedrunning a clear focal point, and they did a great job. The chaos never sacrifices precision platforming either, and with the dodging, rolling, and grabbing for platforms while in the air, it invokes Super Mario Odyssey with the speed and precision involved.
I also found myself obsessing over Bionic Bay's online mode. There are new daily levels to challenge others to get the fastest score, and every single one felt unique. They had different visuals, mechanics, and powers, and it feels well crafted. The last level I couldn't stop playing was Fling Part, a green-hued level where I had to precisely let myself drop in between bombs and hang on to the side to not die from fall damage, then precisely and quickly swap with certain items to move past them before I die from other hazards. I played this one about 40 times, and I am so glad "Replay" is bound to the Y button on my gamepad. It was addicting, and I found the character customizer to be a nice touch.
The sci-fi environment lends itself nicely to the game, and packed with simplistic visuals and gorgeous effects, it became one of the best games to look at. Each level feels wholly different, from pipes that bend as you walk on them to jumping off of lasers and falling onto brain-like structures. A lot of the world becomes caked in this silhouette light from time to time, making your model and the structures appear black as if only seeing a shadow, but the colorful lighting from behind and effects just make it so surreal to look at.
The story is interesting, too. A terrible workplace accident occurs and seems to land us in some rotting, abandoned industrial complex. After somehow turning your body elastic, you have to get back home. It's a simple concept, but thanks to it, we have some of the most creative levels I can think of, and it's just a blast to go through all of them.
I also want to take a moment to praise the physics in-game. I adore physics-based objects in video games, and Bionic Bay is filled with them. Whether it be the way your elastic body ragdolls as you fall into pipe after pipe, or how a crate causes a tower of boxes to fall down and trigger explosives, it just all fits so well and feels so great to watch and experience.
Bionic Bay is a joy to play on the Steam Deck for a multitude of reasons, and there's little reason not to love it. It can run exceptionally well with low battery drain, look gorgeous (especially on the OLED screen), and feel great with a controller. Even though it runs perfectly fine, I did want to make one change for a better overall experience.
There are a couple of scenes that drop the framerate from 90 FPS to around 67-70 FPS, so with that in mind, I recommend setting the framerate to 60 FPS. This will only affect those playing on a Steam Deck OLED, but it's still worth mentioning. This brings down battery drain a bit as well, sticking around the 9W area, and gives over 5 hours of battery life.
There were a couple of spots where I found lower drops, but these were far and few. I would also keep the TDP limit unlocked to account for them, but you will rarely ever see the drain go above 11W:
There aren't a ton of options to change here. We can change language, vibration, audio sliders, and change control bindings.
The game supports 16:10 resolutions, as well as cloud saves and controllers. There are no HDR settings.
Bionic Bay is one of the best platformers I have played in a long time, and quite possibly one of the best I have ever played. The combination of precision and chaos, mixed with a gorgeous sci-fi aesthetic and vibrant atmosphere, makes this one of the best experiences. The powers you can use to manipulate the physics-based world to solve puzzles are exciting, while the speedrunning focus and online mode give more of a reason to come back and try to get through the levels as fast as possible and find shortcuts. It's an addictive, enjoyable time all the way through, with no complaints I could think of.
It also runs brilliantly on the Steam Deck, and while there are some minor drops here and there, that doesn't change just how perfect it fits for portable play. This is an essential to add to your Steam Deck library.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Bionic Bay is a must-play platformer that blends chaos and precision into one wonderful physics-based adventure, and it's great on the Steam Deck!
