The Legend of Bum-bo Critic Reviews

The Legend of Bum-bo is a highly worthwhile experience. Though flawed in places, it makes good on many of its ambitions, bringing together gameplay genres and capitalizing on ideas for an experience that can enthrall longtime fans and newcomers to the Binding of Isaac universe alike.

Even with current bugs and shortcomings, it's been hard to stop playing. 14 hours later, I still want to take just one more turn.

A turn-based puzzle game that will keep you glued to the screen with its six playable characters but will end very soon at because of the only four plans currently available.

I still don’t know if I pulled all those all-nighters with the game despite its bugs because of my Stockholm syndrome or because it’s really that good.

A fun blend of puzzle and roguelike that inspires forward-thinking, but cuts your strategy short.

Bum-Bo is repetitive, childish, revolting, and gratuitous – and most importantly, it’s a stroke of genius. The team behind Bum-Bo have thrown caution to the wind with this one, revelling in the stuff we all loved about The Binding of Isaac but didn’t want to admit. We’ve no need for a story when we have the basement-dwelling combo of tabletop gaming, semi-edgy humour centering on the grotesque, and fiendishly difficult completion tasks. The game is fun, irritatingly so. It makes no sense whatsoever, but you’ll be glued to it from the first trial run.

The Legend of Bum-bo is more entertaining than I thought. But - and this is the big 'but' – I really hat Bumbo the Stout. I just don't like his playing style. But well, Isaac also has characters I don't like to play with (Blue Baby). I'm too spoiled by The Binding of Isaac in terms of size, and I've got a lot more combinations there because of the higher number of items you can collect (and keep). The bugs are annoying, the crashes too of course - after all, the developers try hard to quickly add patches. In the future I will see myself playing a fast run more often - and maybe another one, and another one. Presentation and faecal humor are a matter of taste, just like the rest of McMillen's games.

It’s an intriguing and fun puzzler mashup with easter eggs and callbacks to serve the horde of Isaac fans raving in the stands, and maybe that’s enough.

Beneath the simple “match-three” surface lies a very conscious attempt to subvert the traditions of this trite genre.

Bum-bo may have to deal with a lot of crap, but it’s all well worth pushing through.