Yerba Buena was provided by Focus Entertainment for review. Thank you!
As a California native, Yerba Buena immediately spoke to me. It was the name for San Francisco, and it still has a little spot in the city. I lived near San Francisco for some time and went there frequently, so I was quite intrigued to see the name also be used as a name for a game. And that game turned out to be nothing like what I expected, diving deep into sentient NPCs and an evil plot to take over that world.
In the game, we control Barbara (Barb), a jobless woman who has just missed a job interview. As she is driven around by her best friend, Russell, they get hijacked by a biker, and Russell is taken hostage. Barbara finds a suitcase, and inside it, there is a weird-looking gun called The Oscillator. With it, we can move glitching objects around, which we will need to do if we’re going to foil an evil plan to enslave 1970s San Francisco.
The opening act of Yerba Buena was slow, and I’ll say it’s quite boring up until the 30% mark. Once we start getting into what is truly going on and confirming suspicions from the story's first acts, it gets much more interesting. I don’t want to spoil any plot points, but I like the meta angle that developer Mad About Panda went with. It was an interesting way to convey the overall plot and what is really going on. Most people who play video games will probably have their biggest suspicions in Chapter 2, and it was quite obvious up until the confirmation, but it was still interesting.
I also love how they used collectibles to give background information about the world and companies behind what’s going on. It’s all very meta, but it’s presented in a way that moves away from cringe. It’s all done well, and it helps make sense of the 1970s San Francisco world.
However, I just couldn’t connect with Barb. In almost every scene with her, I just saw her as dull. She didn’t have much personality to her, mostly just going with the flow and being confused. I’m sure that’s part of what makes her special, because she is jobless, but it made it very hard for me to get invested in her. The voice acting was okay, and I liked some of the other characters, but Barb was difficult. It just felt like she was a blank slate with little personality and predictable reactions, just refusing to be interesting or unique.
I appreciate the levels themselves. There's a good variety in locations, going from the town to a crazy carnival to an office space and a bunker just in the first half of the game. I like the change in setting without giving up the core 1970s vibe spread throughout.
Just like the story, the gameplay took a little bit of time to get fun. At its core, Yerba Buena is a puzzle game where you will complete objectives by moving objects around using the velocity of others. It starts off with only being able to use velocity to move objects around, copying the direction of an object, and applying it to a glitched one. It gets a little old pretty fast, with some solutions being so obvious that it took no thought to finish.
Then, our Oscillator gets upgrades, and that’s when the gameplay truly shines. Figuring out the right combination of moving objects along with the other new powers requires more thought and ingenuity, and it becomes significantly more enjoyable. There were some puzzles, like the Basketball one, that I had to really think outside the box to complete, and once I figured them out, it was so satisfying. Even just figuring out one step of the process to complete the puzzle felt rewarding. There are also hidden collectibles to get by modifying the world in certain ways, which is like an extra puzzle in itself.
There are some puzzles that feel a bit too difficult, and it can be a bit frustrating. Some of this was due to not fully scanning the environment, which I highly recommend, but there were some puzzles that had too many parts that needed a specific type of movement to copy/paste, and it wasn't easy to find. Being able to scan and highlight which parts can be modified and which can be copied does help, but some were a little too hidden to make out easily.
Yerba Buena is quite playable on the Steam Deck, but there are one or two concessions that we will have to make. The game defaults to the high-quality settings, and while it runs decently well, there are moments where the frame rate will drop. Luckily, it sticks above 30 FPS most of the time, but there are enough drops here and there to feel noticeable.
Because of that, I actually recommend playing at 30 FPS lock on medium settings. This is going to keep the game at a stable framerate while looking decent. There’s only one graphical setting to change, which is the low/medium/high preset, so there isn’t a lot to customize in detail. Low doesn’t look great, so medium with 30 FPS is going to be the middle ground that stays stable and looks good.
It would have been nice for it to run at a stable 40 or 60 with good visuals, but this is one of those games that doesn’t feel like there’s much being sacrificed at a lower framerate, so I didn’t mind much. The gamepad controls look great, and it does support the 16:10 aspect ratio, so it is comfortable to play on the Deck.
Yerba Buena is an intriguing experience that gets better after its opening. The story and gameplay get significantly better after the opening act, expanding in gameplay depth and with plot points that keep me interested. I couldn't really connect with our playable character, and that did make it hard to enjoy her perspective in the story. Some of the puzzles can be a bit too difficult, but apart from that, it's a great puzzle game that will keep you hooked.
It's also very enjoyable on the Steam Deck. It will need medium settings for a solid 30 FPS experience, but for this type of game, it fits very well.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Yerba Buena is a great puzzle game that starts off slow, but picks up in both its gameplay and story. It's also quite enjoyable on the Steam Deck, but does need a few compromises.
