Remember the childish antics that made trudging to school less dull? Kicking a can down the street was a popular pursuit, especially if you didn’t own a football. If you found two large cans, you could even crush them so they became stuck on your shoes, mimicking RoboCop as you walked. Crunching dry leaves underfoot during autumn was always a joy, and it was equally hard to resist jumping in puddles. Walking across a zebra crossing while only stepping on the white stripes, walking along narrow walls, looking for loose change in a fountain – if you had a good imagination, the streets were your playground.
Bambas draws inspiration from those halcyon days, while also being heavily inspired by urban culture. Essentially, it provides a small open-world sandbox to explore that’s filled with challenges, only instead of navigating a virtual persona you’re instead in control of a pair of sneakers. They’re controlled independently, using the analogue sticks to move each foot and the triggers to raise and lower. This means to walk forward, you need to tap the triggers consecutively in a rhythmic fashion. Using the analogue sticks grants a degree of precision, allowing you to swiftly swing a kick, or place a single foot on a small stepping stone or similar. It’s a set-up that doesn’t take long to master, but it can become arduous on the fingers in the long run. I couldn’t play Bambas for much more than thirty minutes at a time due to getting sore trigger fingers.
Thankfully, it’s centred around short-burst experiences. Viewed from a top-down perspective, you’re free to stroll around and either take on challenges from NPCs, or find impromptu missions by interacting with the countless physics-enabled objects dotted around the sketchbook-style world. Some can be completed gradually over time, such as finding coins, crushing autumn leaves, breaking glass bottles, and destroying sandcastles – with a set amount of each to find. These objects are bountiful and found across the map…as is dog muck. And yes, there is a quest linked to stepping in it. Other missions must be completed in one attempt, such as navigating stepping stones across water, playing hopscotch, or cleaning up a skatepark. A few are even quite elaborate, such has having to deliver pizzas while riding a scooter or taking part in a time trial. Quest givers are, unsurprisingly, pairs of shoes – and each has something wry or amusing to say. Fans of the ‘80s cartoon ‘The Shoe People’ will be in their element.
Progress is tracked on a smart watch, which also acts as a pedometer, and a map can be brought up at any time. It’s also via the watch that the in-game store can be accessed, with a vast catalogue of shoes to purchase. These vary from recognisable trainers with spoof names to things like wellies and scuba diving fins, and each can be customised. While longer or smaller shoes may give you and advantage during some missions, this doesn’t appear to be a deliberate gameplay feature – in the sense that you’ll never be prompted to switch gear. A missed opportunity perhaps. You do however need to find a scooter or skateboard for some missions.
In addition to trigger finger fatigue, a few other issues soon arise. As this is a physics-based game, sometimes it feels like luck is needed more than skill. I completed a long distance can kicking mission simply by dashing along a street, recklessly booting everything out of the way. The mission to bounce a ball eight times seemed impossible, meanwhile, as it usually bounces 2-3 times before coming to a standstill. The top-down camera can also obscure a lot of action, with objects prone to flying out of view, and every time the game is restarted, you’re back in the tutorial area and must hammer the trigger buttons to get back to your desired destination.
The world is generally inviting enough to explore. There’s a park with a few unique playthings such as a climbing frame to scale, a beach with a handful of missions that can only be completed in that area, a row of cafes with outside dining areas to cause chaos in, fountains to find that are full of loose coins, and plenty of street art to discover. All of this is accompanied by an upbeat soundtrack that can be shuffled using the smart watch.
Visually though it’s pretty crude, with simple textures often recycled, and everything is rather angular. Instead of bright and vibrant colours it opts for more pastel hues, while areas like the park are coated in a mixture of muddy browns. Which is appropriate, at least. I think they were going for a stylish Jet Set Radio cel-shaded vibe to match the urban flavour, but they haven’t quite pulled it off.
Bambas! can be described as a condensed ‘collectathon’ platformer that feels more unique than most due to its control scheme, physics-enabled world, and top-down perspective. The problem is that these three things don’t always work in its favour. They aren’t to its detriment, and without any one of these it wouldn’t feel as unique as it does, but neither do they make it feel considerably fresh. It’s the gaming equivalent of buying a new pair of flashy modern trainers, only to find that they make your feet sore after a while, leading to soldiering on for the rest of the journey. Sure, they may look neat, but wouldn’t something comfortable be more practical?
DevilishGames’ Bambas! is out 27th June on PS5, Xbox Series, Xbox One, Switch and PC.