We have not heard about the work on 3DJuegos because of its promotion, but rather through an email we received a few weeks ago: “We have seen that you have covered relaxed titles based on exploration, we think that maybe you would be interested in
trying it out. open world with a minimalist aesthetic of the company Rice Cooker Republic and we will launch for Windows, Mac and Linux on May 17, 2017. ” The email was short and only incorporated a small trailer. His special aura was what led us to be interested in him.
The game world is monochromatic. You start in a dark place, in the first person . Because of the height of the camera you think that you are not in the role of a human: you are almost at ground level. Someone begins to deliver metaphysical messages in an unknown language. It is an alternative reality as few are seen in a video game. A minimalist place, mysteriou
s, but at the same time charismatic. You do not have much idea of what your role is in that world, nor the certainty that you are going to discover something. It goes beyond the objectives. There is exploration. There are puzzles. But first of all it is a trip.
Yin and yang in the open world
It is difficult to give an assessment to this type of titles, because sometimes it disorients more than help. For that reason, it is better that you accompany me through the words and then, if you want, you press the playback button above. Bokida consists of moving through an open interconnected world. It is a desert full of meanings, where you must activate monoliths to connect light with darkness: yin and yang.
It may not look like it, but here you have a puzzle, and it’s pretty clever … How to solve it? Well, there’s the grace …
The introduction of these terms is not a matter of gafapastismo. The game goes beyond the usual, manifesting this Taoist concept in the gamepla
y: the earth and the sky; passivity and activity; light and darkness … There is a relationship between these two forces inserted in the world and in the game itself, something that in practice we put into action through our movement and the resolution of puzzles .
This is thanks to a series of powers that are granted to us as we move forward, generating a dynamic Metroidvania, but also (and mainly) cumulative. The first thing we learn is to generate cubes on the stage, in an unlimited way. You can do i
t to reach high places, fill spaces that open a passageway, or cut them and so bounce a ray of darkness until it reaches a pillar of activable light. Construction, geometry and plataform come together in a powerful playable concept, which is accompanied by other actions that add depth to the initial approach.
It seems vast and simple, but then you realize that there are numerous small surprises inside
Bokida is at the end like a Russian doll. It seems vast and simple, but then you realize that there are many small surprises inside. There comes a moment in the game where you can alter the gravity , or even generate attraction to the cubes that you pla
They are about 5-6 hours in which the only replayability is to collect a series of spheres of darkness. The structure is decentralized, but some type of conductive thread is missing. The narrative is intentionally diffuse, although it would not have been a litt
le more coherent. The puzzles are ingenious. However, there are times when there is a feeling of repetition, that you have already done so, or even that you have already been in that place.
There are a series of portals of darkness that finding them is part of the fun. Exploration is fundamental.
However, it does not stop to surprise me the fact that a student project has reached these levels of depth and innovation. It was the
graduation work at the ICAN school (Paris) of five people. When they received an honorable mention in the Independent Game Festival competition, they decided to take the step: turn the prototype into a video game. This is the brief but striking story of Bokiden’s development, as different as the story he tells us.
We are a messenger with the mission to make the worlds of light and darkness love each other again. In between, pure “zen” beauty in black and white that is accompanied by adaptive music , which adapts harmoniously to the si
tuation, depending on where we are. She is always calm, but she manages the rhythms to immerse us in the fantasy of this different world. The BSO supposes, without much exaggeration, more than half of the importance of the game, and is undoubtedly one of its best aspects.
