It's just okay. The puzzles in concept are really fun but in execution, they can be tedious and really repetitive. This might easily be a me issue, but lag often caused deaths to be unfair as characters fraked out and started doing actions we didn't want to happen, but mileage may vary on that front.

A lot of gimmicks are cool but quickly ware out their welcome, the dog platforms being one of the worst for me. Things can feel too slow and for a puzzle game where you need to figure things out and experiment, that slowness can drag.

The story is also just nothing really, the choices the game have you make are interesting from the perspective that each party only sees one half of the events and you have to try and find which one you'd prefer to pick, but the actual overall narrative is just nothing special. The ending just kind of happened, multiple twists happen all at once that have no real gravity to them because they're not really well executed and it feels like it's trying harder to be deep than actually bothering to have depth. I didn't care enough to get the secret ending I just looked it up and god if I played through this 2 more times to get THAT, this review would be lower.

For as harsh as I'm being it's not awful, some of its puzzles are fun, its art style is really wonderful between the two perspectives and for the multiplayer focus it has it does a good job creating interesting collaboration scenarios even if they don't all land well.

What happened during that boring winter without snow? I might just forget it.

muito foda lek
uma arte muito fofinha e o jogo é lindo
puzzles ABSURDOS de bom
uma gameplay muito inovadora e ABSURDAMENTE interessante
uma história maravilhosa e muito gostosa de acompanhar

esse jogo é uma obra prima dos games, se você não jogou e tem um amigo pra jogar, eu recomendo demais

As with Fire Watch, this is another game I played alongside my wife as a sort of couples activity for us. However, unlike with Fire Watch, this is a game we actually played together! It’s something she’s been talking about playing together for a good few months now, and she bought us each a copy on Steam when it recently went on sale. I really had no idea what to expect from it, but I absolutely trust her judgment when it comes to looking for interesting games for us to get into together~. It took us about 3.5 hours to complete the English version of the game together.

“Bokura” means “us” in Japanese, and has an implication that the people being spoken of (or at least the person speaking) is a boy. Accordingly, Bokura is a story about two boys. The narrative starts with one of them sitting on a train as an adult, on their way home from work. Lost in their thoughts, they start to reminisce about an unforgettable winter they spent with their best friend at the time, and the story begins from that flashback.

The thing is, Bokura, as a game, can only be played with two people who each have a copy of the game. It’s impossible to play it by yourself, and each player chooses one of the two boys to play as at the start, and they see the story from their respective boy’s perspective. Most of the story is shown to the both of you, but there are several points where you’re separated and view a scene different from what the other person is seeing (the game even instructs you not to speak to one another during those times apart, which is a very interesting design choice). The game’s main gameplay gimmick ties in heavily with its main themes like this. Seeing the world through your own perspective, and needing to communicate and compromise with those who see the world differently from you. It ties all this together with a much larger theme of dealing with loss, and it’s quite a well told story. It’s got some pacing issues with how long some of the inter-story puzzle sections go on, but it’s by and large a quite well written story that the both of us enjoyed quite a bit~.

The gameplay is a co-op puzzle platformer (bold choice for a story-focused indie game, I know ;b). This game isn’t just metaphorically about seeing the world differently. Each player not only has a totally different graphics style for what they’re seeing, but they also have different things in the world that they can see and interact with. A moveable box for one player might be an impassible barrier for the other, while a scary monster for one can be a harmless platforming aid for the other. There are also certain parts of each level that only one player can interact with, making playing through the game twice a not unreasonable choice if you wanted a taste at what the other player got to do while you were in your world.

It’s a game that trends surprisingly tough, overall, but it’s a quite fun little puzzle game. I think we finished it a bit faster than some others might because we have a bit more experience with platformers, but that shouldn’t be something that dissuades you from trying it out. This game doesn’t have combat or particularly challenging reflex tests, so even those who struggle with 2D action platformers can absolutely find fun here. My one piece of advice would be that the person with the most experience with platformers should probably choose the boy in the green coat, as we found that he had more difficult platforming stuff than the boy in blue. Similarly, if either of you has issues with seeing blood or gore, then that person should probably play the boy in the blue coat, as the imagery in green’s (while certainly not being a modern Resident Evil game by any means) is a fair bit more graphic than what blue has to deal with.

Aesthetically, I think the game succeeds very well at doing what it sets out to do. The normal world along with the two worlds the boys see are all set apart very well in their graphical styles, and it aids the narrative themes and gameplay very well. The game has some slight net code issues here and there, and you can certainly see some weird screen tearing and graphical glitches here and there when things get a bit more animation intensive, but it’s nothing that made the game more difficult to play (even with her on the east coast of the US and me here in Japan). The graphical style is very pretty pixel art, and the music is quite good too~.

Verdict: Recommended. I’d like to recommend this game more highly, but it’s a fair amount of little things that keep me from doing that. For sure, it’s far from the only well put together story-focused indie puzzle platformer out there, and that’s certainly part of it, but the fact that you NEED a partner to play through it with in co-op is another big part of it that’s going to be a meaningful hurdle for a lot of people. Add that in with that you also need to have some kind of voice communication ability (whether it’s over Discord or just sitting across from each other) to do a lot of the puzzles, and that’s one more thing that makes this a bit more difficult to engage with simply by the nature of how the game was designed. All that said, if you’re willing to spend a little over 10 bucks (and that’s when it’s not on sale) for something that you and a buddy can spend an afternoon doing together, this is a really great way to do it~.

Bokura provides a deep and wholesome story about friendship with some good, challenging puzzles. Since each player sees different things on their screen, communication is key to progressing through these levels which leads to some hilarious and chaotic scenarios. I loved playing through this game and I loved how the ending was quite ambiguous; as the credits started rolling my friend and I realised something that isn't directly explained in the story and it was such an awesome moment. However, I do think there were some elements which could've been explained more.

I 100% recommend this game to play with a friend to kill a few hours, I haven't seen many co-op games force both of you to use your brains so much. Worth every penny.