Quick Review: Back to Bed

Okay, so here's what's been going on: I have a little over 20 of these quick reviews ready. They have all been entered in the text editor in Blogger and I only need to add images. I was planning to post one of these reviews every day, for most of November, to the blog.

Guess what? Nature said "Fuck you". On November 1st, Quebec was struck by insane winds that caused massive power outages all over the province. My house had no power for 29 hours, starting Friday 11:15 AM, just as I was planning to post this article in the afternoon.

Got power back, intermittently, during the afternoon on the 2nd (today). Once for 2 hours, I thought I was okay, then more outages happened for a few seconds each. Result? My computer fucking short-circuited. I am currently typing this on my father's laptop, and it's annoying as all Hell. Of course, it's also a Saturday, meaning some computer repair stores aren't open tomorrow, others are but they open later on Sunday.

I was actually hoping to add images to this article, but since this laptop doesn't have Steam nor my recorded playthroughs, I can't. I still decided to post it, without images or links. (If you are reading this and now it has images, aside from the header from Steam found on Google, and links, it's because I edited them in later.)

I might also do that tomorrow for the next article. Thank God I have all the articles on Blogger right now...

Anyhow, here is the article. Hopefully you'll enjoy, and I'll get around to adding images (aside from the header) and links whenever I actually can.

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(Imagine that the following review is said in a distorted, bizarre voice.)

Back to Bed is a creation of Bedtime Digital Games, who published this short puzzle game to Steam on August 6th, 2014. In it, you play as Bob, a narcoleptic and a sleepwalker to boot, who keeps falling asleep in all kinds of places. Actually, you control his consciousness, a four-legged blue-green creature with Bob’s face, which is hard at work making sure Bob doesn’t get himself killed in the dream world, by redirecting him to the safe area of a room with a bed, located behind a door.

An apple a day keeps the ledges away.

However, things are made trickier with three elements: First, the sleepwalking Bob can only ever turn right as soon as he meets a dead end or an obstacle. Second, all kinds of things can wake him up, which is akin to killing him: Falling off ledges (understandable), but also he can be attacked by walking clocks, dogs, whale trains, manholes (with TEETH!)… Bob’s consciousness must navigate his unconscious self around while avoiding these many obstacles. Third, the dream world is bat-bleep crazy. The design takes a lot of inspiration from the works of MC Escher or Salvador Dali, featuring optical illusions like I’ve rarely, if ever, seen a game do before. You can build straight bridges between tiles that are unconnected, or even on different floors of the same area, and it’ll still work. Bob’s consciousness can even walk on walls, use apples as obstacles or platforms for the other Bob, or defeat some of the enemies by sending them to their doom. Oh! Just wait till portals come into the equation!

Yes, you can walk on walls too! As long as there's a staircase
leading there. Yeah, sure, that works.

Once you’ve completed the original 30 levels, you unlock Nightmare Mode, a tougher challenge in which you must not only bring Bob to the cozy bed, but also steer him so he picks up a key on the way to open the door leading to it, and most importantly, avoid all obstacles. For you see, the first mode had tricky puzzles, but was fairly lenient on difficulty; some hazards made you restart the entire level, but not all of them (Bob was allowed to fall offstage, as an example, and respawn). This still applies here, but Bob loses any keys he may have picked up, so you’re pretty much starting over. Many levels involve carrying apples around in order to direct Bob’s walk around the area.

Dang it Bob, why is it so tough to be your consciousness?

I quite enjoy this one. You need to adapt to the few rules of this puzzle game, as well as the wonky optical illusion you navigate through. It’s overall very fun, though it gets tough at times (as soon as the game introduces enemy dogs that are able to turn corners, the difficulty level goes up a notch). I personally haven’t completed Nightmare Mode, but I like that it’s there, especially since aside from the addition of keys the levels haven’t changed all that much, so it’s only an added element to think about, albeit one that adds a good challenge. There are also options to make your time easier, such as a fast-forward button to make Bob move his ass quicker around and a way to skip cutscenes.

My biggest issue is that, for some reason, while playing with a mouse and keyboard combo (though the game recommends a controller), the cursor tends to disappear on the screen after a few seconds, which makes it very impractical when you want to pause or fast-forward. Dunno if that was intentional to add to the dream aspect; it’s annoying however.

If this game interests you, it’s usually sold on Steam for about 6$ USD.