Bokura’s Premise Can Work Against It

Bokura is unlike most games I’ve played. I admire so many of the concepts in it, as well as the puzzles Tokoronyori presents. However, playing it on the Switch doesn’t quite seem ideal. While things started out fairly smooth, if a bit jarring due to certain imagery, things like lag and some awkward level design combined to keep Siliconera’s Graham Russell and myself from completing it.

Bokura begins with a young person on a train. The character reminisces about an adventure with a childhood friend. At which point, we’re back and re-experiencing it. The two children, each from not ideal family situations, decide to run away into the nearby forest and tamper with an obnoxious statue of a politician. However, after an encounter with a dead deer and mysterious creature, their perspectives change. Everything Graham saw was robotic in nature. Meanwhile, everyone on my side was an animal person and we were in a sepia-toned wood. Still, with no way to go with forward, we headed deep into the forest.

This difference in perspective is more than cosmetic. Each side’s “world” is different. A block on Graham’s side would be a steel rope I could climb on mine. He looked like he was walking over a gap filled with water on my side, but there was no hazard on his. We’d often need to split up on a screen or in an area, with one person completing a task to assist the other and ensure we could properly progress. When a story segment would pop up, our characters could be separated and seeing different sides of a story. When we’d reunite, we’d need to compare notes and make a mutual decision concerning the situation.

The further the adventure goes, the more drastic the changes can be. I’d go through walls in his world, because in mine there was no blockade. He’d be stunned by my ability to “teleport” or clone myself. A creature, which was a “dog” on my side and a “robot” on his, would be aggressive to me and an elevating platform on his. It could be fascinating, and some of these puzzles and situations were genuinely thought-provoking.

It’s only after getting about two hours in and heading into the third hour that Bokura began to, well, fall apart. Situations arose where the lag on the Nintendo Switch and execution of certain puzzles essentially ruined everything. In my animal-friendly side of things, I could use plants to teleport between two location. Graham essentially needed to traverse the upper part of a level. I needed to toggle switches for him to do so. An aggressive dog that would only chase me, not him, was positioned between two of these teleporters and switch. So began a back-and-forth to help him get to the other side and drops to allow the dog, which would turn into a rising platform we could both use when he’d jump on it, to a certain position on the other side of the level. Because of lag, even though we’d do everything right, we failed about seven times. It always happened right at the end, as the dog would jump and kill me while he was in mid-jump to turn it into a harmless platform.

But what did us in was a situation involving a room with teleporters and moving platforms. In my game, it seemed straightforward. I would use plants to clone myself. My doppleganger and I would need to push certain switches. I’d see Graham zip about the level. However, because of both lag and us being in two different places, it ended up being essentially impossible to complete the situation.

I admire Bokura‘s concept. I appreciate the message Tokoronyori is trying to send with it. It’s experimental in a fun way and takes chances. I just wish there’d been a little more work put into the execution once you reach the final third of the adventure. If it hadn’t been for the lag and insurmountable situation we found ourselves it, this would have been a thought-provoking experience.

Bokura is available on the Nintendo Switch and PC.

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