Full Bore

It's hard to begin to describe Full Bore without discussing the plethora of sources it draws from to create a puzzle game that is, on the whole, actually fairly distinctive. It's partially a SpaceWhipper: that sort of non-linear exploration-heavy 2D platformer where avenues can be investigated in an order of one's choosing and you have a map that tells you what rooms still have points of interest to discover. It has one of those puzzle game conceits where, even though you're initially equipped with everything you will ever need to 100% the game, the more cryptic areas of Full Bore's vast labyrinthine underworld will remain a mystery until you get an epiphany at some point later in the game, backtracking to those rooms to ascertain their secrets. Its digging-based puzzles are equal parts insidious and clever and often require a very specific chain of actions in order to solve them, which is why the late-in-development addition of a generous rewind feature that will take you back a number of different time increments is a godsend. A lesser reviewer might take this cornucopia of sources and the fact that the game is centrally focused around boars and refer to it as a "hamalgam", but I'm not a lesser reviewer and you didn't just read that.

Full Bore is the product of three video game developers from California who are collectively known as Whole Hog Games. As the company name and punnish title might suggest, the game is populated with sentient boarkind, including the player character: their choice of the boar Frederick or the sow Hildi (the other appears in-game as your friendly rival). Accused early on of stealing the gem hoard of an avaricious mining corporation tyrant, the player is press-ganged into joining a team of boar miners in excavating the land beneath their feet for precious gems. However, earning gems is entirely optional: the impetus for your excavations soon gives way to uncovering exactly what happened in the past through various lore entries left behind by the "whitecloaks": human scientists that gave the first boars their sentience before mysteriously vanishing. The plot then continues to dig deeper, so to speak, into this central mystery as well as the scattered folklore of the newly sapient boarkind.

However, if the player so desires it, they can continue to hunt for gems and other secrets along the way by solving a series of deliberate digging puzzles. The game slowly teaches you how each of the game's various block types work: dirt can be dug through with a little bit of work; sand and ash will break apart by simply standing on or underneath them or by sending out a shockwave via a ground pound; crates can be pushed around Sokoban-style to create stairways, some of which are steel and indestructible. Later on there are exploding blocks, electronic blocks that move on their own, bridge blocks that will continue to fall unless sandwiched by a block on either side, and many others. The game logs all the gems, lore entries and secrets you find, each with a percentage-based completion value for the game's five areas, and will always inform you whether or not the area you're in has more exits: a lot of the game's better-hidden secrets are behind doorways you must uncover off the beaten path. As a long-time SpaceWhipper proponent - enough that I created my own dumb nickname for them - I appreciate the game's transparency when it comes to how much of an area I have yet to discover. That isn't to say that the game holds your hand throughout its runtime; quite the contrary. As well as having to carefully consider which blocks to remove and in which order, the game will occasionally test your reflexes with sections that require crackerjack timing. A lot of these are thankfully optional, including a digging race that you can lose and still obtain the necessary key item to proceed (actually beating your rival nets you one of the game's many cosmetic items), though you'll still occasionally need to quickly get under or over suspended blocks just before they fall. The game controls just well enough to not make any of these timed sequences too demanding: chances are if you're lagging behind, it's because there's a more effective way forward you've yet to figure out. I used a DualShock 3 controller for my playthrough and though the player character can be a bit sluggish when it comes to dropping down ledges (they have this little animation where they peer over the edge in shock before they can be prompted to actually walk off), the controls are for the most part intelligently designed. For instance, by holding a trigger button you toggle the boar's "climbing" mode: climbing boxes instead of pushing them or moving up scaffolding blocks that would otherwise be walked through for as long as the button's held.

The game's presentation is your standard competent pixel-based artstyle. There's a few special effects like the small detritus from crumbling blocks and in how block types fall apart in different ways when broken. Most of the character sprites are detailed but made deliberately small to emphasize the how cavernous the game's underworld is, though you'll see a handful of much larger and more elaborate NPCs. The lighting is particularly wonderful, especially in how the few underpowered light sources underground contrast with the surrounding darkness; the gems too give off their own light making them easier to spot and once removed the area's luminosity fittingly dims as if to suggest that you've done all you needed to the immediate vicinity. I also want to give a special mention to the ambient electric guitar soundtrack from Noun Verb Adjective: though an instrumental heavy metal soundtrack seems an unusual choice for a game where you're often contemplating a screen full of blocks for minutes at a time waiting for inspiration to strike, the music actually works well with the setting and isn't as distracting as one might assume. Either that or I just got used to it.

Overall, I was impressed with Full Bore. Indie puzzle-platformers tend to be a dime a dozen - almost literally so where bundles are concerned - and that's equally true for Indie SpaceWhippers. It takes something exceptional from this arena to get you to sit up and notice, and while Full Bore perhaps isn't the zenith of this style of game there's a lot to recommend here if you don't mind getting your brain scrambled by its thoughtful puzzles and horrible boar and digging puns.