Bionic Bay

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows PCs (Steam Deck: “Verified”)
Current goal: Flip gravity

Bionic Bay is a cinematic puzzle platformer. Imagine Limbo but with grand, evocative background art and a much bigger toolbox for solving the obstacles in front of you. Floaty physics allows you to leap over massive chasms. A teleporter swaps your location with the object you attach it to. Bending time and gravity are just the start of the game’s interesting ideas. There’s no real story to speak of beyond the moody, evocative clash of violent mechanisms embedded in sprawling, dream-like superstructures, at least not much that I’ve encountered in my three hours with Bionic Bay so far.

But the dozens of mini-puzzles scattered throughout its world offer a satisfying, breezy mix of ideas that provides just enough resistance to keep you engaged without stopping you in your tracks entirely. I’m not sure if it will eventually gesture at the heights of something like Inside, but so far it’s an excellent compliment to 2023’s Planet of Lana, and the rest of the lineage of Another World-inspired 2D action adventures. — Ethan Gach