Adventure games are always hit or miss as they have many classics to live up to. There are the occasional crazy and interesting adventure games like Neverending Nightmares that are quite fascinating. Bulb Boy is one such game where play as a, well, bulb boy who must defeat a monster to save his grandfather. There’s not much of a story here as it’s all about atmosphere and visuals. The game is rather short and it’s not the most cerebral adventure game out there, but it’s worth a purchase.

Like your typical adventure game you can tap on areas for the character to move to and examine items. Bulb Boy is very straight to the point so there’s not much exploring here. There’s only so much to click on and very little inventory. The game has bosses on each stage that you must defeat, but the puzzles are very easy and not really puzzles. You find an object and it can only go in one place as there’s no backtracking or exploring involved. I would love to see this universe expand as Bulb Boy is grotesque, beautiful, and full of atmosphere. It’s a horror adventure with a cartoon flair with guts and everything disgusting all over the screen.

There’s a lot of green in this game and the cut-out art style is just fantastic. I enjoyed playing through the whole game despite only taking a couple of hours. Bulb Boy’s death animations are brutal, there’s a lot of variety, and the game has a nice quick pace to it. Some of my favorite things about this game are the extreme closeups of areas as it shows the sickly detail of everything around this character. It’s nightmarish for sure and definitely one of the most artistic games this year.

It’s a crying shame that this is an indie game and won’t get much attention. I hope for a sequel that’s more expanded, but we’ll see. In the mean time just feast your eyes on the beautiful art despite how straightforward and simple the gameplay is.