Back in 2020, what feels like fifty years ago, the PlayStation 5 launched preinstalled with a game called Astro’s Playroom. What Japan Studio’s Team Asobi division made was a follow-up to their VR-exclusive Astro Bot Rescue Mission and the result was a charming 3D platformer that took players through the internals of their favorite PlayStation systems while giving them a ton of easter eggs to discover. Boti Byteland: Overclocked from Purple Ray Studio is a similar 3D platformer that swaps out the PlayStation innards for PC parts as you attempt to save Byteland from an ominous threat. You’ll run through the GPU and fly across the graphics processor in a journey that will take you roughly eight hours. (If your luck permits.)
I suppose this is a foreboding thing to say right off the bat but I don’t like beating around the bush so here it goes: I really wanted to love Boti Byteland: Overclocked. I was sent a copy of the game nearly a month before it came out and I’ve been playing the game on and off the entire time. Why on and off? Well, I’ll get to that. But first, let me talk about my immediate first impressions.
Boti Byteland: Overclocked is a bright and charming game right out of the gate. Being a pretty straightforward platformer, there isn’t a lot of preamble before it lets you loose to play at your own pace. You do have a little home in the Hub that you can return to between levels and, along with a cat, it also contains a tube to customize Boti’s look, and, more importantly, a computer to buy upgrades for more hearts and a wider data collection range. Felines aside, the game does its best to commit to its PC setting. The result is visually distinct PC-themed levels that every so often introduce new mechanics to effectively scratch at the “smash boxes and collect things” itch that every gamer has. There’s even a nice electronic soundtrack to back that all up.
When Boti Byteland: Overclocked is firing on all cylinders, it not only looks nice but also has some decent gameplay variety. While most of the game will be spent running, jumping, and dashing around levels to smack buttons, flip switches, and destroy viruses, you will also be riding carts and sliding down tracks lined with musical pads. All of which feels pretty responsive. The game alternates between using doors and barriers to slow your progression. Doors often need encoders to be filled with data, which shouldn’t be a problem if you smash everything you see, while barriers usually mean you have to clear an area of viruses to continue. The puzzles aren’t too complex with the trickiest ones being magnetic traversal puzzles that require precise timing. In that way, the game has the natural frustrations that come from playing any platformer and missing a beat. Which then does come with the sweet feeling of satisfaction when you finally manage to do it right. Once you beat the game, along with the usual hunt for secrets in levels you’ve already beaten, you can spend your hard-earned data and Botcoins to open up new areas in the Hub, creating a sort of Byteland amusement park which includes a time trial track race and a musical slide.
Unfortunately, as I kept playing the game, I found more and more issues that I couldn’t ignore, and much like the viruses you fight off while playing, they started tainting the other aspects of the game too. The first issue arose on the fourth level: Graphics Processor. I had just parked my little track cart at a pit stop and seeing that I had just crossed a save checkpoint, I closed out of the game for the night. The next day, I booted it back up, smacked the two buttons that needed to be hit to open the path forward, and returned to the pit stop to find my cart gone. This prevented me from making any progress for a few days and I was told that to fix it, I had to return to the Hub, hop into another level, play until I got the first checkpoint, go back to the Hub, enter the Graphics Processor again, and take it from the top.
The second time, having learned my lesson, I played through the entire track cart section in one go, and with the wind under my wings, I kept going, determined to finally finish the level. That was until I came to a point at the end where I died after opening a door and reaching a checkpoint. I found it weird that the game spawned me two checkpoints back, but it wasn’t too far and I glided over to the checkpoint once more to find that the door I had opened was now closed. Don’t get me wrong, it looked open and there was no actual door there, but I couldn’t walk forward. To make matters worse, the way you open the door is to fill an encoder with data, and it was complete, meaning I had fulfilled the necessary threshold and that the door should be open. Yet another softlock that prevented me from making progress.
To clarify the second issue, instead of restarting the entire level, I just had to shut down the game and open it again for it to half-fix itself. I still spawned a checkpoint behind but the door was locked and visible and after filling the encoder with data, I was able to continue forward. However, by my luck, I died accidentally right after entering the area once again, which repeated the above glitch with the checkpoints.
Those weren’t the only bugs or glitches I came across, just the biggest, and having to replay sections of the game over again really made me dig into my thoughts on certain aspects of the game. For example, I found that I wasn’t all that invested in the story (something that was made worse by the fact that a crucial cutscene in the game played with no audio), it was mainly the intrigue of new and unique levels that made me curious to see what’s next. Then there’s One and Zero, the two talking heads that act as the digital devil and angel on Boti’s shoulders and join him on his journey. Nothing against the actor who voices both characters, but I found their dialogue repetitive and while it did sometimes help point out a collectible I missed, they rarely provided much insight. When all I had to worry about was occasionally getting stuck in a block (a problem that the game aims to solve by adding an “Unstuck” button that takes you back to the last checkpoint) or falling off the map from my own stupid antics, I didn’t mind their banter. But the more I played, the issues became more grating, and their charm consequently less so.
I want to make it clear that I am not trying to scare you away from the game. I have been told that the developers are working to fix the bugs and make improvements so there is a chance that you might not come across the same bugs as me. Furthermore, even if you aren’t interested in the story, like me, I still think Boti Byteland: Overclocked is a fun game (when it works) to just relax with or play while watching something. In fact, barring the moments of frustrations around getting softlocked out of certain areas, I still found myself having a good time breaking boxes and collecting data. I also like the variety of costumes Boti can wear and that often incentivized me enough to go off the beaten path to find the QR codes hidden around the levels.
Going off of what I said earlier, I also want to quickly mention that the most fun I had on the game was actually on the Steam Deck. It required some more tweaking than my bulky PC (obviously) but the game does run fine on the handheld. After work, I enjoyed grabbing my Steam Deck, kicking my feet up, and watching Hunter x Hunter while I played Boti Byteland: Overclocked for a bit. And those of you with friends will be happy to know that the game has drop-in/drop-out co-op play to boot, which will definitely impact the pace because at times it feels like the game was designed around that feature.
If you’re clamoring for some new 3D platforming action, there is mindless fun to be had in Boti Byteland: Overclocked. However, I find it hard to recommend the game to the general audience at the moment. Eventually, I do think the game can turn into a decent 3D platformer but it’s clear that it needed more time and polish. It commits to its aesthetic wholeheartedly but it’s often held back by glitches and bugs that can spoil an otherwise fun experience. Boti Byteland: Overclocked is out this week on PC. For console gamers, the game is expected to release early next year and I actually think that would be the ideal version of the game since the bugs will hopefully be ironed out by then. A review code was provided by the publisher.
