Yerba Buena – Portal By Way Of 1970s San Francisco?

There are puzzle video games that ask you to suppose exterior the field. Then there’s Yerba Buena, which appears extra serious about letting you throw the whole field throughout the road, flip it invisible, and bounce off it like a trampoline.

Launching in the present day on Xbox Collection X|S, PlayStation 5 and PC for £19.99, the most recent launch from Focus Leisure and Mad About Pandas drops gamers right into a surreal model of Nineteen Seventies San Francisco, mixing platforming, environmental puzzles and reality-bending mechanics into one thing that already feels a bit of totally different from the norm.

And if the phrases ‘Portal vibes’ instantly spring to thoughts, you most likely gained’t be alone.

At A Look

• Recreation: Yerba Buena
• Developer: Mad About Pandas
• Writer: Focus Leisure
• Platforms: Xbox Collection X|S, PlayStation 5, PC
• Style: Puzzle Platformer
• Value: £19.99

Welcome To A Damaged Gameworld

Yerba Buena places gamers within the sneakers of Barb, a younger lady residing as an NPC inside an deserted online game world referred to as Bay Angels. Issues shortly go sideways when a harmful glitch begins threatening town round her, pushing Barb from background character into unlikely hero territory.

Serving to her alongside the way in which is an odd machine referred to as the Oscillator – and that is the place issues begin getting correctly bizarre.

Fairly than merely shifting objects round, the Oscillator permits gamers to repeat and paste the bodily properties of things all through the world. One second you is perhaps giving a desk the bounce of a trampoline. The subsequent, you’re launching buildings via the air or turning stable partitions into one thing you’ll be able to merely stroll via.

A Puzzle Recreation With Some Critical Persona

Whereas the gameplay hook is the apparent attention-grabber, Yerba Buena additionally appears eager to go large on environment and storytelling.

The Nineteen Seventies San Francisco setting provides the sport a particular id, whereas the entire ‘NPC trapped inside a forgotten gameworld’ premise provides thriller beneath all of the platforming and physics puzzles.

There’s additionally a barely playful tone – much less chilly sci-fi puzzler, extra vibrant glitchy journey with persona.

And given how closely puzzle video games have borrowed from Portal 2 over time, that’s most likely no dangerous factor. In truth, we beforehand hung out explaining why Portal 2 may well be the greatest game ever made, so something keen to channel even a bit of of that vitality instantly will get our consideration.

Can Yerba Buena Grow to be A Puzzle Favorite?

Puzzle-platformers dwell and die by the power of their central mechanic, however Yerba Buena definitely appears to have discovered one able to carrying a complete journey. The concept of manipulating physics and motion properties on the fly feels ripe for intelligent degree design, artistic options and loads of participant experimentation.

We’ll discover out quickly sufficient whether or not Yerba Buena totally delivers on that potential, largely as we’re nicely on the assessment practice, however for now, this seems to be like one of many extra intriguing puzzle video games to land on Xbox this yr. Choose up Yerba buena from the Xbox Store for £19.99. It’s additionally on the PlayStation Retailer and Steam.