BYE-BYE BOXBOY Review (3DS)

Sometimes you’re able to do a lot with very little – it’s possible to make great games without dozens of intertwined systems and photorealistic graphics, and it’s nice to see big developers try to achieve this. BYE-BYE BOXBOY is the final installment in the BOXBOY trilogy of puzzle-platformer games. They feature a minimalist design and focus on creating a variety of interesting puzzle scenarios with just a few simple mechanics. This game introduces some new gimmicks, but for the most part it’s simple to pick up and play. BYE-BYE is actually a ‘hello’ to BOXBOY for me, as I haven’t played any of the previous games in the series, but it’s made me feel like I’ve been missing out on something special.

The minimalist design of BYE-BYE BOXBOY is best illustrated through its protagonist, Qbby (jury’s still out on the pronunciation of that). He’s a box with a face. No intricate design, no deep backstory – just a cube with a face. And he’s adorable. The way he dangles from an edge, his deadpan curiosity and frustration in the tutorial animations – he manages to show a lot of character despite the game not really featuring much in the way of a story or dialogue. Qbby possesses a unique skill – he can create chains of boxes from his body that he must use to navigate through levels. This ability’s used in a number of simple ways – a common one is to create stairways you can use to climb to higher areas. If you don’t detach yourself from a chain then you can retract it and slide yourself along it – this can be used to squeeze yourself through tight gaps, or hook yourself onto a higher platform and drag yourself up.

The box chain is a simple mechanic but the game manages to keep it interesting throughout the whole adventure by chucking in complementary mechanics that add a new dimension to the gameplay. Each batch on levels will focus on one of these, starting with easier puzzles that let you wrap your head around the new mechanic, progressing into much more taxing mental workouts. One batch might require you to balance scales with blocks (and your body) in order to clear a path while another might be filled with lasers that will kill you unless you’re shielded by blocks. There’s multiple levels that task you with escorting baby cubes (dubbed Qbabies) through to the goal, which is much better than it first sounds! It might be easy enough for you to get through a level by yourself, but doing so might not leave a clear path for the Qbaby, so you have to think things through much differently. Once these babies have been rescued, you’ll gain access to a new series of levels that apply gimmicks to your blocks. This could mean your blocks explode and destroy the terrain, or teleport you on top of them when you drop them, which opens up whole new avenues of gameplay that make you think through a totally new set of rules applied to your blocks. Despite the fact you’re using the same basic mechanics over and over, the puzzles on offer provide a lot of variety to keep your interest for the full 8+ hours you’ll be playing the game.

There’s rarely a huge amount of pressure applied to you through the levels – it’s a game with more of a focus on mental skill than action. This, combined with the length of the levels, makes it a great game to fit into a lunch break or bus trip. I rarely got stuck for too long on a single puzzle, but at the same time I didn’t feel like it was easy or that I was cruising through without thinking. The puzzles are just presented in a way where you can slow down and think your way through them before you act. If you do mess up and get stuck or die, you can quickly rewind to a checkpoint, so you don’t feel like you’re being punished or made to feel stupid. If you do feel totally clueless how to progress you can spend a Play Coin to get a hint that pretty much just gives away the solution for the current level segment, but I’d advise against it because they’re a little too effective.

But for those who want more challenge than the main ‘story’ of the game provides, don’t worry – there’s more than enough to go around. Each level in the game has one or two crown items placed in them for you to collect. Sometimes these are placed in ways that will assist in working out where you should place your blocks, but other times they’re placed out of the way, somewhere that provides you with a tough puzzle in finding an alternate way through the level to reach them. To make things more difficult, crowns will disappear if you use too many blocks in a level. This encourages you to find the most efficient path through a level, adding an extra layer of difficulty. Throughout most of the game I didn’t have too much trouble getting all the crowns in each level, but there’s a point where they suddenly become really hard to collect. Obtaining all the crowns in a level will give you more currency when you complete it. You can spend this currency on a variety of fun unlocks like costumes for Qbby or comics featuring Qbby and his friends in cute and humorous situations. One of the other types of reward you can purchase are what’s called Challenge Levels. These are levels that place extra restrictions on you, like not being able to jump or fall too great a distance. You can’t rely on your usual strategies here, which makes them much more difficult.

There’s also four series of bonus levels that are unlocked once you’ve beaten the main levels of the game, and the sudden spike in difficulty here is intense. These levels require you to use some more advanced techniques that aren’t explicitly spelled out to you, but you can work out for yourself with (a lot) of experimentation. There’s also quite a few levels that now require you to act quickly or with precise timing, which makes these levels much less of a casual pleasure. Even the hint coins don’t explicitly spell things out all the time – there’ll still be an extra dimension you need to work out for yourself, or some skill-based element to the puzzle. There’s many more “Eureka!” moments in these levels if you have the wits and patience for them, but by the time I was done with them my feelings were less “Bye bye Boxboy, I’ll miss you” and more “Yeah alright, don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Boxboy”. If you’re not a hardcore puzzle fan I wouldn’t recommend touching these because they’ll make your last moments with the game some of frustration rather than satisfaction.

If you have the Qbby amiibo or amiibo of Kirby characters then there’s some neat little bonuses that you can unlock with them. The Kirby amiibo (whether they’re from the Kirby series or Smash Bros. series of amiibo) will unlock exclusive costumes that make Qbby look like each character. They look great and are a nice fusion between the styles of Boxboy and Kirby. The details on the Meta-Knight and DeDeDe costumes are of particular note. The Qbby amiibo will unlock a Qucy costume (a female box character in the game) as well as a filter that makes the game look like it’s being played on a classic GameBoy. These two rewards can also be unlocked by getting all the crowns in every level (yikes!) or by having save data of the previous two BOXBOY games on your system. Save data of the previous games will also unlock sets of other costumes, some of which grant Qbby new abilities.

For only $7.50 you really can’t go wrong with BYE-BYE BOXBOY – if you do the absolute minimum you’ll be getting a few hours of inventive, bite-sized puzzles but if you want to take it further then there’s extra content on the side that’ll really strain your grey matter. The biggest problem with the game is its difficulty curve – while it eases you into the mechanics enough to get through most of the game, it suddenly jumps from a crossword puzzle to samurai sudoku with next to no warning. It’s sad to see Qbby go just as I’ve gotten to know him, but BYE-BYE BOXBOY is a fine send-off indeed.

This review was written based off a game or game content provided by the publisher. We don’t assign review scores to game reviews.