The Haunted Hoard: Bulb Boy (PC)

Besides his light bulb head and flying dog, Bulb Boy is a lot like any young boy. He enjoys watching T.V., playing with action figures, and going fishing with his grandpa, but one night, a strange darkness settles upon his home, filling it with unusual horrors that twist the things he loves into monstrosities. As the only one still free of its influence but up against giant killer creatures, it falls on Bulb Boy to save his small family through cleverness rather than strength in his self-titled point and click adventure.

Bulb Boy tells a wordless tale, meaning it took reading the store page to understand that Bulb Boy’s family are known as Grampa-raffin and Mothdog, but it’s not exactly a complicated tale. After waking up and realizing the house has been turned into a terrifying and twisted reflection of itself, Bulb Boy only really wants to make sure his family is okay, but each room presents some sort of dangerous creature or situation to overcome. The fact you have a light bulb as a head in Bulb Boy is a fact put to immediate use too, the glowing head of the protagonist giving any area he enters an eerie low glow, and while it’s fairly easy to see what you’re up to, at times you catch a glimpse of what’s lurking on the edge of your light’s range that helps with instilling an unsettling ambience in a game that does utilize a fairly cartoony style even when it comes to the design of some of the horrors you encounter. Bulb Boy can die though and is very fragile, a monster catching him leading to an instant crunchy kill that won’t set you too far back but still shows the game doesn’t hold back in imagining a few awful fates for the glass-headed boy.

Bulb Boy can be a dark and even gross game, the art style softening how disgusting it can get as feces is not only featured but sometimes a puzzle-solving tool, but even in its harsh world, it’s hard not to find yourself rooting for Bulb Boy to put his family back together despite the odds. Part of this is because the game doesn’t just explore the night of this unusual corruption, a few moments featuring flashbacks to Bulb Boy’s happier life playing with his grandfather and dog. The three of them always feel so giddy and quick to laugh in their delightful pasts, but these flashbacks are positioned right before a familiar element reveals how it’s been twisted by the new dark force that threatens their lives.

Not only good for getting you to actually care about the overall goal, these flashback segments are also played through the same as the twisted rooms around the house, the player needing to solve puzzles using available items or interactions. In Bulb Boy’s warped home this often means trying to maneuver around some threat or invalidate it with a clever killer trick, but in the past this can be as simple as getting your baseball out of a well or catching a fish. You are still presented with a puzzle to solve either way, the logic being the true test even if there is no lethal danger tied to failure, but with Bulb Boy barely being over two hours long, it makes good use of the occasional look at the past to make you want a happy ending even though its creepy monster designs and moody locations in the present are definitely the main draw.

Bulb Boy’s puzzling sections are always self-contained, not much carrying between rooms. In fact, even the mechanics of how you move about can shift around quite a bit. Sneaking around a big bloated bit of undead poultry in the kitchen can involve you needing to stash your glowing head in hiding places, but in the pipes beneath the house you instead need to remain fairly active as you move about to avoid hookworms or complete tasks quickly enough for everything to properly fall in place. While there are many little items to find in each place and use to disable threats or make a way forward, one of Bulb Boy’s most interesting ideas is the frequent use of your own head as a problem solving tool. Monsters seem to have almost no interest in the hero’s actual body, meaning at times you can toss your head somewhere to take another route while your body can shimmy along and catch up to it later. There are times you are rolling about only as a head, or you can even finagle the head into something like a fish’s body to take control of it to more easily swim around. Positioning and placement end up a pretty interesting tool for adding more substance to the game’s puzzles, execution often not too difficult but the range of options available in a situation is much greater than just amount of items you have in your inventory.

In fact, it could be said movement is often the primary tool for overcoming obstacles in Bulb Boy, and there are definitely times the game cranks up the difficulty with there even being a proper boss battle. Deaths don’t set you back far, so even if it can feel like Bulb Boy himself can sometimes be surprisingly slow to maneuver and he takes his time grabbing objects with his tongue when he’s just a head, retreads are still not that difficult to do if you do slip up and they certainly won’t make the game drag. Even if you do end up in a situation where you can’t quite figure out what the game expects of you, there is a hint option by way of Bulb Boy having a little thought bubble with an image serving as a clue. With so few variables at any one time, it’s more likely you’ll instead likely figure out the puzzle with the execution being the challenge and one with a bit more substance than merely carrying out the motions thanks to positioning often involving some thought as well.

THE VERDICT: An eerie puzzle solving adventure, Bulb Boy makes imaginative use of its hero’s odd head to create puzzles deeper than using items you find in the right spots. Movement playing a big factor can lead to monstrous threats actually presenting some danger but navigating around is still often about figuring things out rather than moving skillfully. Bulb Boy’s eerie rooms mix uncomfortable sights with moody lighting, but then it also throws in a delightful if strange family of three that are easy to find charming despite the dark situation they’re thrust into. Bulb Boy can be cute even in a world where a monster can utilize snot like a glue trap, but the contrast is what gets you invested in finishing this very short point and click game.

And so, I give Bulb Boy for PC…

A GOOD rating. While the flashbacks to a happier life are Bulb Boy’s strongest tool in making you care about its central trio, Bulb Boy also layers in little delightful touches like Bulb Boy’s delighted laughter when he clears a puzzle or mischievous giggle when you pick up an item like a knife. At the same time, it also uses the realistic crunch of a bulb breaking when a monster catches you to make Bulb Boy’s potential unfortunate fates more visceral. The choice to make the hero’s head a light bulb definitely is one that goes deeper than him just being an effective light source, its puzzle solving potential amplified because of its flexibility and the fact it can move without the humanoid body it normally rides around on. There are a fair few inventory puzzles that aren’t too deep or interactions that you can potentially bumble your way through by trying everything, but its the emphasis on where and how Bulb Boy moves that leads to almost all of the game’s most effective and interesting situations, solutions expanding beyond just the available tools since your head can be a tool, a vulnerability, or even a way to complete shift up how you play when it takes something over. Bulb Boy’s short adventure does mean concepts can’t be expanded on too much but it also doesn’t feel like the game spends much time retreading ground. Situations require unique solutions but usually if they are difficult it will be due to movement requirements starting to get a bit more demanding, but it’s not like you dwell long on the more challenging moments because you’ll be easily able to attempt them again.

Bulb Boy’s main draw will definitely be its interesting atmosphere and the choice to slam grotesque monstrosities into the simple cartoon world of the bulb family, and each new room does provide an interesting new abnormality that clearly doesn’t belong. It’s easy enough to keep moving along and encountering the strange sights as well, but what makes Bulb Boy more than an art tour is that the puzzle solving clearly had an effective core idea with character positioning and motion playing such an important role without it completely shifting the game into an active experience. Bulb Boy is a point and click puzzler where you engage in a bit of action, this able to keep it a thinking game where you learn to beware the monstrosities properly but can also turn that added element of motion and maneuvering to your advantage to try and bring the delightful bulb family back together.