Bring You Home Review (PC)

Alike Studio’s Bring You Home—a short two-hour cartoon-like world creator of a platforming game—has just about finished shedding its leathery skin on its original platform, and is finally available to pick up on Steam. Combined with somewhere in the vicinity of forty-eight vibrant levels and a surprisingly in-depth storyline, the game brings a petite glimmer of family-friendly puzzling to a wider screen, effectively transporting all of the signature idyllic qualities and quips of its mobile counterpart into a sensical toy box of adorable characters and tailorable building blocks.

Of course, I’m getting way ahead of myself with this one. It seems that, if you are unfamiliar with Alike Studio and its mobile-based heritage, something as simple as a PC port of its native forefather probably won’t sound all that appealing. Alas, Bring You Home is arguably one of the more memorable manipulation-like level shufflers on the market, similar to the likes of Lemmings, or more recently, Tin Hearts. Here, though, you aren’t guiding a mindless troupe of mini soldiers through a plateau of leftover toys; instead, you are helping a small pudgy protagonist search for their alien pet across a wide array of cartoon-like portals, all of which feature their own unique themes and distinctive features. Like Tin Hearts, but with a little more, shall we say, creative flair.

Curious to hear more about Alike Studio’s Bring You Home and its recently published acquisition of the Steam storefront? Then let’s jump into it a little further.

Home Is Where You Hang Your Coat

Bring You Home transpires over a total of forty-eight levels, with each level on the conveyor belt requiring you, the curator of objects and worlds, to manipulate, collaborate, and control each set piece in order to help the young hero navigate through the challenges that befall them. For example, in several instances, you either need to rotate the on-screen panel vertically or horizontally in order to “create a path” for your hero. Moreover, you also need to manipulate specific items on the panel to prevent obstructions and other potentially hazardous risks from obscuring the route. The idea from there is simple: select GO, and witness your blue friend attempt to trace the steps that you left behind. If they fail, a puff of smoke hinders the process, and an option to restart becomes available. To that end, there isn’t a whole lot of slapping on the wrist to fret about.

While the levels and panels do indeed require some basic level of adjustment and preliminary analysis, I wouldn’t say that Bring You Home is a difficult game by any stretch. In fact, you could quite easily breeze through most, if not all of the stages in a little under two hours, depending upon how much of the scenery you want to soak up and how many achievements you wish to earn along the journey. The point is, though, that you don’t necessarily need to be a puzzle fanatic to enjoy the world that Bring You Home spreads out on its platter, as it’s more or less made to feel both inviting and accommodative to its audience. And that’s always a breath of fresh air, given the sheer quantity of brash and, quite frankly, brutally tough puzzle games that frequent the genre in this day and age.

All Roads Lead Somewhere

The element that truly elevates Bring You Home to a new dimension is its world design—the bold colors, innovative mechanisms, and original compositions that make it so that no two panels are ever the same. From dimly lit skeletal spaces to sun-kissed plateaus of light, retro-like voids to ice-drizzled woodlands, and just about everything that laces between the lines of its relatively short tale, Bring You Home does in fact convey a tremendous amount of great things and creative intricacies on its two-dimensional canvas. The fact that it also houses some small bit meaningful character arcs and even a solid post-climax message, too, makes it all the more impressive. Small touches, but ones that nudge the overall presentation up a few dials all the same.

To echo, Bring You Home isn’t a long game. That said, in the hour or two that it does manage to steal the spotlight, it does make a genuine effort to keep you both emotionally and physically invested, if not with its intriguing puzzle pieces and obstacles, then with its strikingly abstract art style and panel designs. To that end, you won’t struggle to find what you’re looking for here — especially if you’re desperate to scratch that two-for-one itch that beckons for some good old-fashioned level-shuffling fun.

Verdict

Bring You Home‘s vibrantly eccentric portals meshed with a pleasantly satisfying, almost magical gameplay hook bode well for a fantastic puzzler that’s befitting of a classic children’s illustrated storybook setting. With just enough reading materials to whet your heart and give you something to sink your teeth into, Alike Studio once again delivers a short but incredibly sweet and wholesome level manipulation simulator that’ll no doubt keep you romping forward in search of that alien companionship whilst you wait for that next big Lemmings-like adventure on mobile or PC.

For a game that’s a little under two hours in length, Bring You Home still manages to capture and contain a surprisingly weighty storyline that bears all of the hallmark elements of a memorable interactive tale. Could it have benefited from a few additional levels? Perhaps. Is it any less captivating without the added bonus of a meaty campaign with a few extra bells and whistles? Not at all, no. If anything, the fact that it finds a way to infuse originality and flair into forty-eight distinctive portals is a gift unto itself, and definitely something that’s deserving of its own kind of appreciation.

Of course, if you enjoy Alike Studio’s other works—Love You to Bits, being the most fitting choice of the bunch—then you’ll no doubt feel right at home with the team’s newest portal-hopping level creator. And even if you’re unfamiliar with the studio, or even the concept from which it builds its world around, then I could still think of a bunch of reasons why you would exhume some basic pleasures from this microscopic universe. It’s short, soothing, and above all, a perfect way to twiddle your thumbs while waiting for a new vessel to help cater to that puzzling itch of yours.