The journey bobs story is the first game made by the young 2 person development team of double thought games. Unfortunately, the small team and lack of experience shines through with the story of Bob’s Journey.
Plot
It’s unfortunate, but there isn’t really a compelling plot to The Journey: Bob’s Story. You play as Bob, a man who lives in Swindon. Near swindon there’s cave which a group of explorers have dedicated themselves to exploring. Among the explores is Bob’s best friend, Neibag. Neibag and the explorers have not returned from their latest expedition, so bob ventures into the cave to find them. Unfortunately, after that, nothing is explained at all. You’ll use jetpacks, meet a yeti, have a goblin magically transport you all without any sort of explanation. Aside from that, the story is pretty one note because there’s no plot development. Your looking for Neibag – that’s the extent of the plot. Bob’s Journey does offer choices throughout the game that do differ the gameplay, but seem to have no effect on the story. Bobs story advertises multiple endings, but after 3 playthroughs with trying various combination of choices, I’ve always received the same ending. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but don’t expect a different ending every time. Unfortunately, the one ending I can speak to also doesn’t explain anything. The game just sort of ends. You can find items throughout the game that are supposed to explain the backstory a bit more via pictures, but when the main story explains so little, I didn’t feel compelled to do so.
Writing
There just isn’t a lot of writing in the Journey: Bob’s Story. You meet very few characters, and each one only has a line or two. That’s a shame, because I felt there could have been more personalities to the characters. It’s usually just one or two lines giving you your next task and that’s it – there’s no extra dialog to give characters more depth. It doesn’t help that you never really meet Neibag, and yet you’re supposed to care about him. It’s also hard to overlook the few cases of grammatical errors, spelling errors, and once time text in the wrong language. That being said, at least the choices in the game are fairly interesting. Are you going to give the ring(that your dying mother gave you) to a goblin in exchange for information? It’s a hard choice right - and it works because it’s not clear what the ‘right’ answer is.
Voice Acting
The Journey, Bob’s Story does not feature voice acting
Immersion
Unfortunately, not explaining things is also a theme in the world of Bob’s story. It’s never really cemented even the time period the story takes place in. There photos, radios and jetpacks, but swindon feels like an old village. You pretty much have to just go with it and not ask questions. However, the art style and the Music of Bob’s story is the tiny highlight of the story. While the art style is very simplistic, it kinda worked for me, it has a certain charm about it, and I do like how they placed things like trees in the foreground to give it a more 3d feel. That said, animations of characters besides bob are severally lacking. The only character that even moves in the whole game is Bob. Everyone else stands still like a cardboard cutout. The music was good at putting you in an exploring mood, but that also had its own problems. The music and the sound effects would sometimes cut off periodically, leaving you with a completely silent game – something that definitely pulled me out of the experience. Unfortunately, audio issues weren’t the only glitches. While much less frequent, I did encounter visual issues that once again ruined the world for me.
Conclusion
While we do have to remember that this is the first game from a tiny 2 person studio, The Journey: Bob’s Story just cannot match up against more experienced and well told stories.