Boti: Byteland Overclocked (PC) Review

Boti: Byteland Overclocked, from Purple Ray Studio, Untold Tales, and CouchPlay Interactive, is a charming 3D platformer title that might appeal to fans of the classic formula established by the greats of the past.

The question is whether it does enough to set itself apart from the competition, and is it worth checking out? Let’s plug in our flash drives and upload ourselves to Byteland.

Overclocked

Boti: Byteland Overclocked kicks off with players taking up the role of Boti, a courier robot. Without wasting any time, you’re given a task by “Kernel” and your two floating robot pals, Zero and One, and it’s off with you into the game’s world of Byteland. Players will quickly be taught how to jump, attack, glide, and dash and the intro level does a good enough job of getting you up to speed. As you progress, Boti will also be able to slide around and learn to use magnetism to traverse regions. There are some very light upgrade mechanics with Boti being able to purchase buffs back at the hub world with in-game currency. You can also customize Boti with different skins but that’s about it.

The gameplay is fairly straightforward and simple and clearly aimed at younger gamers. If you’re expecting a very challenging game, you’re not going to get that here. It’s a throwback to the simplicity of yesteryear and felt very reminiscent of Ratchet and Clank – just without the focus on weapons. Enemies in Boti: Byteland Overclocked barely harm you and even if you die, there really isn’t much of a penalty since you’ll just respawn at the nearest checkpoint with full health and can retry an area immediately.

The story of Boti: Byteland Overclocked is also simple and straightforward, with Boti and his pals wanting to overclock the CPU at the centre of Byteland. Honestly, it felt like an afterthought and just functions as an excuse to get you to explore and experience all that Byteland has to offer. That’s a good thing, as the real star of the show here is the level design. Each area in Byteland is teeming with creative details and little tidbits of cute, tech-related design quirks. For example, you can see floppy disks, data streams, hard drives, RAM integrated into the environment and platforming. It’s all very cute.

An aesthetically pleasing but janky world

The cartoon aesthetic works really well and the visual effects are great, which makes it easier top appreciate how well-designed each level is. You’ll want to explore every single nook and cranny grabbing all the Botcoin and other collectibles as you go along.

Sadly, many parts of Boti: Byteland Overclocked have a janky and unpolished feel. Characters will interrupt conversations and voice-overs will just start playing out of nowhere, which can be a bit jarring – and it doesn’t help that these voice-overs will also get quite repetitive over time. We really don’t need to hear how great the jump smash sound is from a character every single time you pull it off. The camera can also be a bit unwieldy at times and will result in your untimely death in later levels.

Boti: Byteland Overclocked even includes an “Unstuck” button in the pause menu, which suggests the developers know that the game is unrefined. You will definitely get stuck either on terrain or somewhere within a level at some point, making the “unstuck” option an unfortunate necessity they can hopefully patch out later. The game’s physics could also use a lot of work with some objects literally just floating in mid-air while others will inexplicably be flung around realistically. It’s strange to see this in action, there’s no sense of consistency, but thankfully it’s not too distracting.

Returning to the positives, the soundtrack of Boti: Byteland Overclocked is pretty decent and features plenty of catchy beats that don’t get annoying. The sound effects and voice acting are solid too – just a little repetitive with those in-game quips.

Final Verdict

Boti: Byteland Overclocked is an inoffensive throwback to the platforming greats of yesteryear. It ticks all the basic checkboxes for a platformer, while not really excelling or differentiating itself too much from the tried and trusted aspects of the genre.

The game definitely seems to be aimed at a younger audience and given its short length, it’s well worth playing through. It also features co-op, which makes things even easier than they already are and you can breeze through the game without many hassles – a byte-sized adventure if you will. The unpolished nature of the game does bubble up to the surface at times, but for the most part, Boti: Byteland Overclocked is a fun enough indie platformer we can recommend to fans of the genre.

Boti: Byteland Overclocked was reviewed on PC using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher.