Pukan Bye Bye (PC) review "What's a pukan and why am I saying bye bye to it?"

Steam summary: "Created to enrage."

Steam description: "Do you want to hurt your friend? Give him the game Pukan Bye Bye and enjoy the spectacle. This game is a constrant trap, you did not prepare for such a life... 26 levels of making you a man (or paranoiac)."

Wham bam check this shit:



I knew what I was in for as soon as I saw one screen, it was gonna be a merciless platformer designed to kill kill kill. I'm not a fan of the rage game subgenre, but you could do hella worse than Pukan Bye Bye when nabbing a random Steam title. Sure, its black-and-green presentation gives me flashbacks of mainframe data entry (hilariously the game has a pre-launch graphic quality config with six settings), but I can appreciate a lone dev who knows his artistic limits. Plus the music kinda kicks.

You're the pukan, and he pukan't do shit except run and jump. The dude leaps crazy far, almost as far as me when I'm wearing the Jordans, we'll say these are more like LeBrons.

Here's how a typical Pukan stage goes down. In this one level, I run my pukan to the right, underneath a floating platform, which suddenly falls and crushes me from above. The next time, I plan for this. I hustle towards the platform but leap to the left at the last second. Then I swivel to the right in mid-air and triple-loop atop the falling platform like Tara Lipinski (if the Olympics were a bloodsport). Damn proud of myself for that tricky bit of platforming, yeah, I felt like Conan crushing my enemies even though it was just one fucking jump.

Another leap towards the exit and OH SHIT it's a fake door. Giant sledgehammers pound me. In the span of one second my victory cries turned to lamentations. I was so upset. It's an emotional rollercoaster.

The solution to that level is to take leaps of faith onto blocks that appear from thin air, but unlike Mega Man, you aren't given advance notice that these illusory blocks exist. It's a true leap of faith into the void. Magical predictions are one of my good points (makes up for the missing left nut) but even I recognize that this is terrible level design.

Gotta say though, it's kind of admirable how thoroughly the developer has placed deathtraps at the worst possible points. It made me break the chains of habit and learn to play differently - instead of landing square on the center of platforms, I aimed for the very edge to avoid the inevitable spikes. Which reminds me of another plus for Pukan: the hit detection is spot on, like if a spike pops out of the ground but you land two pixels to the left, you'll be okay. That's fuckin' ace.

On the other hand, one thing that really stings my scrotum is that the game is meant to be played with a controller, but then it makes you reach over and press 'E' on the keyboard to flip levers or use warps. Only one button on the controller is being used, that's like seven more buttons that could have been bound to perform actions but no, Pukan's gotta make me EEEEEEEEEEEE.

Let's bring this baby home: if you wanna suffer like G did, then Pukan Bye Bye is a worthy $2 spend. It'll def make you mad, but after every level you'll legit feel like Mad Max when he beat Master Blaster: exhausted but energized. Well that's all I got, adios!

Community review by JedwardRandy (January 19, 2020) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.