Bionic Bay is the first single-player game I have rolled credits on in 2025. So far, I’ve only beaten a couple of co-op games with my partner this year. The gameplay of Bionic Bay is reminiscent of some of my favorite precision-puzzle platformers, Super Meat Boy and Celeste — and many 2D Mario games. Everything else about this world — the story and dark art style — brought me back to my experience with games like LIMBO, INSIDE, and White Shadows.

“Bionic Bay is a precision-puzzle platformer set in an ancient bio-mechanical world,
hand-crafted pixel by pixel to create a high-fidelity, atmospheric environment.”

-Juhana Myllys, Creative Director of Bionic Bay

Every few years I obsess over a simple platformer with a great story. When I say “simple” I mean it’s just a platformer. No combat or boss fights. It’s all about getting from point A to point B. There’s also usually some sort of obstacle to raise the stakes — solve puzzles, stay in the shadows, or just don’t die. These games also take about a week (or weekend) to complete.

Bionic Bay blends elements from both of these types of games to create a perfectly short story with some “hard enough” precision-puzzle platforming. It’s never as hard as Super Meat Boy or Celeste, where I have been stuck on a level or spot for days (even a couple of years at times).

As you advance, the story slowly reveals itself, like with LIMBO, INSIDE, and White Shadows.

Brilliant Design

The game and level design of Bionic Bay is top notch. I am also thankful that each small obstacle is a checkpoint, if not this game could have taken me months (or even years) to complete. Instead of starting the “level” or entire section over when you die, it’s more encouraging to start at the same point where you just failed.

The magic of the game design is that I was never stuck on a particular obstacle for longer than a few minutes. At the moment the obstacle may feel impossible. This is the biggest problem in your life. However, once you get past the “impossible obstacle” you forget it ever happened and move on.

*Side Quest:
It’s sort of like being stuck in traffic while driving. At the moment this is the worst thing
that has ever happened to you. You are angry and frustrated. Five minutes later,
you’re back to cruising and forget the whole thing ever happened.

Most of the mini puzzles are about the same difficulty, a few may require more thought or skill. I may have breezed past one that you would get stuck on, and the same may happen with your playthrough.

The controls throughout Bionic Bay remain constant — move, jump, roll. It’s the abilities that change throughout. The swap feature is present pretty much throughout the game. It allows the player to switch places with objects. ChronoLag gives the ability to slow time. Power Fist gives players the strength to punch objects in motion. 

There’s one ability that showcased the brilliant level design of Bionic Bay — Gravity Manipulation. The player can shift the direction of gravity. At this point the developer needed to think of the full shape of every object on screen, and how each side can be used as a platform or disaster-piece.

Throughout Bionic Bay, the player is given different combinations of these abilities.

Pixel-by-Pixel

The look of the game really grabbed my attention from the start. I love the way the camera closes in on intimate close ups and pans out to reveal giant set pieces throughout different points in the game.

It wasn’t until the camera really zoomed in that I noticed that the protagonist was made entirely of little pixels. I also realized that the entire map was made this way, and whenever the camera zooms out it creates stunning scenery.

Then I saw the post on the PlayStation Blog by Juhana Myllys, the Creative Director of Bionic Bay. The article went more in depth on how he created this game and the art style.

Read the blog post here.

In Death Do Us Art?

I died so many times exploring Bionic Bay. Sometimes dying became a way to learn how to get past a particular obstacle. It also became its own form of art. I captured many of my deaths to create this video of my many beautiful deaths in Bionic Bay.

Bionic Bay took me about 10-11 hours to beat. There’s also an online speed running mode, so the game doesn’t have to end there. The game follows a cohesive story, but it is also broken into levels that you can revisit once completed. It’s sort of like a concept album of music. The whole thing works together as a whole, but you may also revisit your favorite track/level at any point.

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*myVGBC.com was given a review code for Bionic Bay by the publisher.