Game Reviews

Bayo Bongo

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Bayo Bongo
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| Bayo Bongo

You can talk about sophisticated gameplay mechanics all you like, but the core appeal of video games can be boiled down to this: you press a button (whether real or virtual) and get rewarded with a pleasurable visual and aural response.

Bayo Bongo demonstrates a healthy understanding of this principle, cutting through many of the obstacles that most match-three puzzlers put in between you and endorphin central.

Fortunately, there’s still just about enough depth to keep your attention over a moderate time-span, but the emphasis here is very much on instant gratification.

Cheap fireworks

Developer Codeminion doesn’t make you jump through the usual hoops for your fireworks. You only have to match a minimum of two like-coloured blocks and they don’t even have to be next to each other.

You do have to be quick, though. While there’s no limit to the number of coloured blocks you can chain, you need to be quick to include them all before they disappear, so it’s still advantageous to have them close to each other.

Bayo Bongo gets away with this simplified system because the goal isn’t purely to chain coloured blocks. It’s a means to an end – that end being to drop coins off the bottom of the screen and into a meter at the side of the screen. Fill that meter and you move on to the next level.

Things are complicated by a time limit and a bunch of obstacles that delay your progress. Chained-up blocks and coins need to be freed with bombs (which appear when you make high-scoring matches), while iced-up examples need to be tapped multiple times (though a shake of your handset will do the same job).

Hidden depths

It’s the aforementioned explosions that really provide the satisfaction here, setting off chain reactions and ridding the screen of a hefty chunk of blocks.

Less satisfying are the bonus rounds sandwiched between levels, which require simple (and ultimately tiresome) taps as coins float up the screen.

Fortunately, what appears to be a fun but wafer-thin game shows itself to have another level. It’s not buried particularly deep, but you soon realise that you need to manoeuvre bomb blocks into the most effective positions to take out chains and troublesome octopi.

Bayo Bongo isn’t the deepest puzzler you’ll play this year, but its commitment to providing the maximum pleasure for the minimum effort – while still retaining a modicum of strategic play – makes it pleasantly unique.

Bayo Bongo

A unique brand of colour-matching puzzler gameplay ensures Bayo Bongo provides plenty of instant gratification and just enough depth to make it worthy of consideration
Score
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.