Platforms: PC
Initial Release Date:Sep 30, 2024
Developer: Raptus Games
Publisher:Raptus Games
Genres: Action Adventure/ Puzzle
NBB.exe, or Neon Blast Battle, describes itself as a “challenging fast-paced puzzle platformer” as well as “Bomberman with a Metroidvania twist.” While I don’t wholly agree with the latter, the former is definitely true. Mostly. It’s certainly a challenging puzzle platformer, but not always for the right reasons. NBB.exe is a colorful game with a fun premise and an interesting world, bogged down by strange design choices that conflict with the challenges ahead in ways that are more frustrating than fun. If it made just a couple of tweaks here and there, this game would be much easier to recommend. But as it stands, NBB.exe is an exercise in irritation and annoyance.
STORY:
In the world of NBB.exe, robots compete against each other in the NBB league on live television to become the best of the best. Each robot is backed by a company (which also serves as their name), and during every new cycle, an NBB champion is crowned. It’s the chance of a lifetime for any competitor, all jumping and bombing for a shot at becoming the next NBB superstar.
However, as you progress and explore more of the story, you’ll find that there’s more to this competition than just winning or losing. As you delve deeper, you learn more about what happened to humanity and the world at large. You also begin to suspect that the NEON corporation isn’t exactly aiming for a fun or sportsmanlike competition. While the plot isn’t particularly deep, the world presented is fun and somewhat interesting. In truth, though, the plot is rather bare.
The robot girls are given different personalities, but they’re mostly for show. The personality of the robot you choose doesn’t really shine through in dialogue with the other robots. Each of the robot girls has a one-note personality that, once you’ve seen it once, gets kind of boring. One is snarky all the time. One acts like a princess all the time. One is a spunky jock… all the time. The NPCs scattered around the world have much more personality, even if their designs don’t stand out and would easily be missed if it weren’t for them talking the second you’re in proximity. Sometimes they spout some interesting exposition; other times, they’re having discussions that made me chuckle once or twice. Ultimately, it’s a fun plot, but very by-the-numbers. Gameplay was definitely the focus here.
GAMEPLAY:
The premise of NBB.exe is simple: enter a room, complete the challenges, and move on to the next. The challenges can be as simple as jumping gaps in a certain time window or as difficult as kicking bombs away to hit switches in a sequence to open your path. At face value, the levels are challenging and interesting, testing your precision and patience as the difficulty ramps up level after level. All of that sounds good. However, a few design choices really hold this game back.
First, let’s talk about your character’s movement and abilities. Your moveset is simple enough. You can jump, dash, jump dash, place bombs, and kick (which is mainly used for your bombs). While this sounds like a good array of abilities, they’re all held back by a major issue: your character is so slow. Your walk speed is terribly slow in this game, and in a game that asks me to be fast, it feels pretty bad. So this prompts you to use your dashes. The ground dash may be the best move by far; you can chain 3 at a time, the cooldown isn’t too bad, there’s no recovery, and it’s the only time you feel fast in this game. Conversely, the jump dash is awful. To be fair, the game alerts you from the get-go that using the jump dash comes with a recovery roll, but why? Recovery landing, I can understand, but in a game like this where jumping gaps is 90% of what you do and some gaps can’t be cleared without jump dashing, why have the roll there? All it does is cause deaths that feel cheap because it makes you wonder, “What else was I supposed to do?”
These issues are compounded by many of the game’s layouts and the top-down perspective. The game is so colorful that it can sometimes be confusing. In the background, you may see moving arrows and know that it’s the background. But when you eventually see moving arrows that are a similar color, you’re left wondering if they’re part of the foreground. If they are, can you stand on them? No? Sorry, you just died because of the platform you didn’t know was coming. Colorful platforms have edges that are difficult to gauge due to all the saturated colors, sometimes leading you to walk off them and wonder what happened. This is made worse by the decision to make this game top-down. Gaps and depth are almost impossible to gauge, making it feel more like trial and error than skill-based gameplay. A cluster of platforms of varying heights floating together can easily trick your mind into thinking there are no gaps. But more often than not, there are gaps.
The design of this game is confusing more often than not. With how slow and heavy your character feels, you’d think the challenges would reward careful thought and timing. Sometimes, rarely, it does. However, the majority of the game is about being fast-paced and jumping and dashing while also being precise with a character who is slow, risky, and not at all precise. At its worst, you simply end up guessing platform timings and hoping it works out for you. Add the disorienting perspective, and you have a game that would be almost instantly better if it were in a normal 2D perspective. That, and speeding up the character. The recovery roll would be more justified if these changes were made, as it would remove much of the frustration this game can cause.
Perhaps those were design choices to maintain the game’s difficulty, but when I’m dodging lasers, my own bombs, the shockwave of a boss, all while trying to platform on slowly fading platforms with a character that feels like a literal ton of metal? It doesn’t feel challenging. It feels unpolished and irritating, which keeps me from fully enjoying the game. Even with the leaps of faith and strict timings on switches and buttons, just making the character faster would go a long way.
VISUALS:
NBB.exe is not lacking in colors by any stretch of the imagination. Every color on the screen is vibrant and heavily saturated, sometimes to its detriment. Depending on the character you pick, your colors can sometimes blend a little too much with the environments. The character I chose for most of the game was purple, so this didn’t happen often, but I can see how picking the light blue or yellow robots could be an issue.
The environments are distinct enough to tell apart, yet all retain that futuristic aesthetic. I think the best of them is the Asia-inspired area, flooded with vibrant golds and reds contrasting against deep browns and beige colors. The same can be said about the main six robots you choose from. They’re colorful and distinct enough to tell apart, and their designs even match their personalities to a degree. Shiver is icy and standoffish, so her head has icicle-like spikes, while Endora is haughty and regal, so she has a more elegant design than the rest.
This also seems like an appropriate time to talk about the performance of the game on PC. It’s good, for the most part. The only times I experienced any stuttering was in the NBB transition screen. Even with all the colors, different structures, and waves, the performance was solid… on PC. I also tried it on the Steam Deck, and it didn’t go well. The colors were all wrong, and the stutters never stopped. In time, it may be ready, but it wasn’t at the time of writing.
AUDIO:
There isn’t much to talk about in terms of audio design. The sound effects throughout the game are fine. If I had to find something to criticize, it would be that the robot voices were a little grating. I preferred hearing the voice lines through a filter, because when it was just garbled noises, I was tempted to skip every cutscene that included it. Other than that, the futuristic sound palette worked to sell the setting.
The music was a more mixed bag for me, but definitely more good than bad. Some tracks were wallpaper music to me, while others were actually pretty good. I’m also a fan of how dynamic the tracks are in boss fights, with phases evolving the track as it goes on. The only real downside is that some tracks repeat. And in a game where the expectation is for you to die a lot, there are some tracks you’re going to get sick of.
CONCLUSION:
The foundation of a great game is here. There are some rough edges, but they’re fixable. There were times I could even ignore those flaws and enjoy the game for what it was. In those moments, I saw a glimpse of a great game that was marred by questionable design decisions. This game feels difficult because of a lack of options or weak options against difficult odds, rather than being hard because of how well you can use your good options against those odds. I hope the developer considers some tweaks, as I believe it would make for a better game overall. The game, as it is, isn’t bad, but it can be frustrating and irritating more often than it is fun. I think the game is worth keeping an eye on, but right now? It’s a difficult game to recommend.
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