Bobo Bay

I abolutely adore bobo bay, and I cannot recommend it enough. I need concrete goals in games, and at first I didn't think bobo bay could provide them. However, I will happily say I was wrong and if you're like me you can enjoy and love bobo bay too ^_^ Tried out the demo (which is still available on itch), and very quickly found that Bobo Bay was for me. The sagas and trials give you daily goals to aim for, and the bobopedia gives you a longer term completion goal. Your daily loop also affords ample opportunity to get what you need to meet those goals too (new update will make it less rng too <3). I hope you also enjoy bobo bay, and thank you to the creative team for all the hard work that has gone into making this game that I love.

This game is such a good lil guy raising sim. It's hard to stop playing it because every day adds more progress and you constantly want to see what's just over the edge. Seeing your lil guys grow and whenever they accomplish something new they couldn't before feels so good. Really fun slow paced game that respects the time you put into it.

good

For what its worth, I appreciate the fact that in terms of progression this games makes you have to breed Bobos and use this element of game play in order to succeed in events. This in comparison to Chao Garden in Sonic Adventure, you can win all events with a starting Chao if you grinded and decided to. The game play loop here is very grindy. Only being able to feed twice a day is annoying, and while this has the potential to change in what I'm assuming is early to mid game, the game play loop can get stale. My least favorite part is currency acquisition. Unless I'm missing something, betting on Bobo races is the main and potentially fastest way to get currency. This sucks because even when understanding the mechanics that you can actually see, you have good nights and bad nights gambling. Another potential negative when mentioning the game play loop is that the main way to level up is through events, which makes it part of the grind. You will have to sometimes sit through events you know you are going to lose just for a level up, which makes the grind more tedious. Overall it is a good Chao Garden clone that you can get your money's worth from if you don't mind the grind. At the time of this review I would say after 30 hours of gameplay I'm probably only in mid game, maybe even still early to be honest. The content is certainly here.

I think I am not the target audience for this game. That's okay! I have no experience with the Chao Gardens, so perhaps that lack of familiarity is why the gameplay isn't clicking with me personally. The gameplay loop of running around, feeding Bobos, exploring islands for things to feed Bobos, and participating in Races isn't poorly-executed, but it doesn't feel like there's a point or a purpose to anything I'm doing (or at least, the purpose isn't translating through the gameplay.) I have read that the developer intended for this to be a sandbox-style experience, and that's fair! I suppose it was on me for assuming there would be more to drive the underlying experience forward. Playing Bobo Bay left me with many questions and few answers. There's no real overarching story to hook you, nor is there even really any explanation of who the main character is, what a Bobo is, or really anything substantial about the world itself. Apparently story/lore-related elements are revealed late-game in the form of Sagas, but without anything concrete to hook me as a player in the opening hours, I do not feel compelled to work towards unlocking them. We are here in Bobo Bay to raise Bobos and help rebuild the town (?) -- why? What's a Bobo? Who even is the main character and why have they been trusted with a plot of land? Why do we race Bobos? Why can't we go inside our own house? There are all these complex systems to making different, complex Bobos, but the Bobos themselves feel kind of shallow to me. We can pet them on the head, you can dress them up and feed them, and they do little things... what they're doing and why they're doing it isn't clear, and there are so many variables left unexplained that trying to figure out the underlying systems is tiring -- and I'm saying that as someone who played Knights in the Nightmare on the DS; I'll happily spend time learning some stupid complex nonsense for the sake of it, but I need to have some reason why! Even checking your Bobo's stats is frustrating -- the prompt with the information (which is brought up by patting them on the head) vanishes after a few seconds. Why can't I just see this information from the phone menu, or voluntarily close the window instead? I suppose the crux of the game is the discovery element of finding, breeding, and unlocking new Bobos. I wasn't hooked by this experience, so at the end of the day I must concede that the game isn't for me (at this time. Maybe one day!) This is a lovely game, let me be clear. It's cute, it's charming, it's clearly a labor of love and has a dedicated community of nice helpful folks, and I am always happy to see an indie dev succeed! I would be open to trying this again one day, as well; right now, I just think it's not the game for me. Thus, I have refunded it for the time being: farewell, Bobo Bay!

I love my bobo children

cute, polished, and itches the chao-like itch!

Everything I wanted from a Chao Garden successor.

I LOVE BOBO BAY~ My sister and I played Sonic Adventures 2 with Chao Garden, and I have to say.. Bobo Bay is definitely that game that feeds the chao need. I love all of my bobo's dearly >.<. I love watching them play with one another, dance, play ball, play with the blocks, ask to be held, and so on! The islands are pretty cool as well (they have a variety of items you can obtain and bring back, sometimes they have a seasonal look, there's races, and challenges)! You can work on SAGAs to bring new stores and species back, and just so much more! I've also loved sharing my little bobos' adventures with friends! My pet birb also has a file we play on together!