Physics-based puzzle platformers are in short supply these days. Like GTA for open world games or Fortnite for Battle Royales, Portal is the one that stands as the best within the genre. Yerba Buena has a smart concept at its core. While it never reaches the heights of Valve’s masterpiece, it tries to do something different. There are some smart puzzles that made me want to keep trying, even if there are some frustrations in how it implements its key mechanic. The story is pretty cool, too.
You play as Barb, an NPC that suddenly becomes Yerba Buena’s main character. It’s a neat meta concept. After a brief introduction riding around in Barb’s friend’s taxi, you’re interrupted by Bear, the leader of a biker gang. He kidnaps your friend right out of the taxi, but leaves behind a locked briefcase. Inside is a gun known as the Oscillator; a contraption that has the ability to manipulate your surroundings. It’s a neat idea; unfortunately, some of the implementation is stuck behind frustrating controls and a lack of quality of life support.
The world of 1970s San Francisco is suffering from something called the Glitch. Objects of all kinds are affected, but these are how environments are manipulated. By pointing the oscillator at a glitching object, you can copy its movement. If a car is driving to the left and is one of the things glitching, you can copy its movements to move a dumpster blocking an alleyway to the left. If something is spinning around, you can use its momentum to make an entire building block spin if that’s what’s required.
Not only is movement one of the properties available to be copied. Trampolines and bouncy castles can be copied to make other items bouncy as well. You’re also able to turn things to gas to allow yourself to move through them. Each ‘level’ has glitching objects, and it’s up to you to piece it all together. After a rocky start and some weak acting, not to mention lines of dialogue that keep getting repeated every time I revisited the same spot, I started to find the flow of Yerba Buena. It just became frustrating whenever I tried aiming at something.
There’s limited creativity when working out how to solve puzzles. Portal was all about experimentation within the environments. Yerba Buena feels somewhat restrictive. It’s made more irritating when you have to point the oscillator directly at the object. Using a controller is much trickier than a mouse and keyboard. Especially when glitches are moving at a decent speed, it lacked that fluid chain other puzzle platformers have. Having to scan the same item over and over again, rather than having the momentum stored until you scan something else would also have been nice.
Instead, having to return back to the item to reuse its movement or ability got old fast. These small changes would have been appreciated. Yerba Buena is far from a bad game. I enjoyed having to work out what I needed to do. Having more freedom to experiment, mixed with some of the stabilisers and restrictions being stripped away would have made it a more enjoyable experience. Despite my issues, the mechanics grow and open up further down the line, refusing to let the gameplay get stale or repetitive.
I also enjoyed the story of Yerba Buena. Being set inside a videogame is a clever idea. Barb isn’t going to go down as one of the most memorable characters, but I enjoyed my time with her. It was the way you begin to understand its world, with audio logs from the ‘game’s developers,’ and using ‘assets’ of the world to manipulate with the oscillator. It tackles some interesting themes relating to creativity in today’s world that I also appreciated.
Despite some jankiness with cutscenes, restrictions in its freedom, and frustrations with controls, Yerba Buena is still a solid puzzle-platformer. It features some smart level design and a nice art style reminiscent of cel-shaded titles like Borderlands and Telltale’s The Walking Dead. While it’s never going to be as highly regarded as titles like Portal, there’s still enough here for fans of challenging physics-based puzzles to get a kick out of it.
