Cinematic platformers have come a long way since the days of Another World. The genre’s emphasis on problem-solving and fluid animations with a driving story has evolved and gradually strayed from scripted or canned animations. Limbo and Inside innovated by incorporating physics-based gameplay to enhance the verisimilitude of the kinesthetic feedback.
Bionic Bay takes the advances in physics technology leans harder into it than any cinematic platformer before it. The premise begins a little bit like Half-Life; a bunch of scientists toying in God’s domain, unwittingly open a portal or some kind of dimension while experimenting on some kind of object of power. What follows is a surrealist adventure wrought with extreme personal danger and funny ways to die.
This is a review coupled with a supplemental video review. You can watch the video review or read the full review of the below:
Bionic Bay
Developer: Psychoflow Studio, Mureena Oy
Publisher: Kepler Interactive
Platforms: Windows PC, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)
Release Date: April 17, 2025
Price: $19.99
After a climactic and explosive introduction, the nameless white-collar protagonist experiences a dramatic change in his biology. He’s faster and can jump higher than any man and a little more ways in, he acquires a device that lets him swap places with objects. There are a couple more abilities that show up much later in the game, but they appear so late that they hardly count.
Once Bionic Bay sets the player loose in its sprawling linear stages, the core experience is trying to make it to the end alive. This is a one-hit death kind of game, and you will die a lot. Bionic Bay is mercifully liberal with checkpoints and it’s always pretty obvious where the protagonist will respawn.
Unlike most cinematic platformers, Bionic Bay‘s narrative and visual storytelling takes a bit of a backseat. At times this feels more like a stream of consciousness Super Meat Boy where levels bleed into each other. Aside from the visually arresting vistas and apocalyptic scenery, the story is uneventful, and the focus is mostly on trying to survive a bizarre alien landscape that’s been twisted and torn apart.
Other than swapping objects, white-collar can wall-jump and do a DK-like roll and air-lunge. Rolling and lunging is a core pillar to gaining momentum for clearing gaps or passing through some diabolical danger zones. At high level play, the parkour looks awesome and the feeling of perfectly executing these stunts is thrilling.
Bionic Bay keeps things interesting and tense by keeping a steady flow of new ideas, gimmicks, and creative use of its hazards. Just when you thought you saw all that can be done with burning molten goo, the game will throw sentient molten goo that follows white-collar. Mastering the control physics and the swapping is paramount and it’s always surprising how far these simple mechanics can go.
With a bit of practice, gamers can become Bionic Bay masters. The game is built around high-level play and speed running. There is an entire mode built around honing and perfecting the best runs. It feels good and it looks good in motion.
The difficulty runs fairly high, and players will undoubtedly encounter moments where they’ll endure some trial-and-error problem solving. It can feel like hitting a wall multiple times and while the respawn is nigh instantaneous, throwing white-collar into crushers, explosives, and all manner of killing machines will get a chuckle out of players due to the absurdity and genius sound design.
Yes, it’s true; Bionic Bay is a funny game. The way the protagonist runs and flails his arms like he’s some kind of drug-addled Muppet never stops being amusing. Dying constantly in games is usually obnoxious, but the protagonist’s procedural animations are so absurd that they soften the blow of frustration.
The aforementioned sound design goes a long way in emphasizing some of the cartoonish agony. While lunging through the air and getting clipped in the head by some esoteric metallic object sounds a loud “CLONK”, sending our hero rag-dolling into a bloody tumble. Other times the hero keels over from deadly cosmic burns that leave him as a fried husk where you can still hear his crispy flesh sizzle.
The soundscape is restrained and minimalistic. For the most part, Bionic Bay is layered with electrical hums and industrial sounds of machinery crunching and buzzing away like a massive, God-like insect. The mechanical ambiance perfectly complements the insane pixel art that can be best described as some kind of Giger-esque cyber nightmare.
The vistas are dense with parallax layers to give an incredible impression of depth. The sensible use of smoke, lighting, and post-processing effects give the imagery a richness and grit that you rarely see. Most of the time, the strange looking meshing of organic and machine is incomprehensible. It’s like the technology is so advanced that you don’t even know what you’re looking at.
Bionic Bay is a brilliant work of art that showcases stellar imagery with some of the most sophisticated and deft pixel art in a video game, while boasting ingeniously designed levels.
The physics-based gameplay and mechanics peppered through the experience keeps players on their toes and the hilarious gruesome deaths will keep you laughing all the way to hell.
Bionic Bay was reviewed on PlayStation 5 using a code provided by Kepler Interactive. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy is here. Bionic Bay is now available for PC (via Steam) and PlayStation 5.
