Hypersensitive Bob – by Whippy
Genre: Indie Action Adventure
Developer: SIEIDI Ltd
Publisher: SIEIDI Ltd
Release Date: Mar 29, 2016

This is Bob. Bob is a good guy. Be like Bob.

Hypersensitive Bob is a roguelike top down shooter indie game, where you have to clear each level of the waves of creepy crawlies and collect vaccines to purchase upgrades for your character. Why? Because you are a doctor’s worst nightmare, you have an allergy of everything and you need to step up and remove the allergies from existence. Hypersensitive Bob is developed by Sieidi Games and this is by far one of their greatest games.

When you first open the game, you’re plopped into a living room where you can select other characters, once they’re unlocked, and start the game. You’re also greeted with what buttons to push on your keyboard, but oddly nothing for my controller. Even if I started up the game with my controller already plugged in, it showed keyboard buttons. So as I had fiddled with the controller trying to understand what did what, I moved onto the actual game. The first thing I noticed was the music, it’s relaxing and very high quality, but I turned it off because it just wasn’t my type of jazz. But what was my jazz, is the sounds of everything else; your gun sounds are satisfying, the death sounds are pleasing and they are all very high quality, no low quality sounds to be heard.

Hypersensitive Bob’s graphics have a low poly count, but that’s used to achieve a cartoony look which pays off well as it gives a distinctive look to the game, and fits well with the style of the characters and level design. Levels are constantly floating in the air with your rocket ship in the background, which is also where you enter and exit levels after 3 waves of enemies appear. Enemies spawn in random locations every wave, but you have a 3 second gap to see where they are spawning and where you should move to be in the best cover. The trick to this is that you can’t actually tell what’s going to be coming out of that spawn location, it could be a bee, it could be a terrifying mushroom, you just have no clue until Christmas morning comes around. Another thing that can randomly spawn is the vaccine machine, where you can deposit some of your vaccine for a level up to unlock other characters. This system really reminded me of The Binding of Isaac, actually, the whole game reminded me of The Binding of Isaac, but that is not a bad thing.

When you complete a level, you’ll get the chance to pick 1 out of 3 abilities to add to Bob while the next level loads, they range from common and cheap power ups (which are paid for by collecting the vaccines from killing enemies) that will do small upgrades like boosting your health by +1, or a legendary upgrade that can make it so all the damage from your gun can be shot out in 1 big blast!

You can combine this with other power upgrades. For example, I had a powerup that made my gun super powerful but gave me only one bullet, but I also had a powerup that gave me a 100% chance to hit a critical shot on the very first shot. I was unstoppable! I was a killing machine! I was going to never die! Just to get hit by an enemy because I wasn’t paying attention. But I was in luck! As you can use 100 vaccines, or more depending how far you are into the run, to restart the level you died on. It can get costly as my balance usually consisted of a max of 250. So when I could restart a run for 200, I might not have enough because I used bought a powerup the level before. This makes choosing a power up a decision that I can spend up to 20 seconds on deciding. “Will I die this next level? How much is the respawn cost? Will I see this powerup again?”. All for it to be a waste of time because the next level was a vaccine level, where you are rewarded with tons of vaccine points to spend on powerups! These powerups can also have some negative side effects while having a bonus, like having a shield every level for the first hit, but you move slower, etc. This is great for building a character for the run, like building a character that is super powerful but only has one hp, or a character that is super weak but has 15+ HP (which I have done myself) but the only problem is that you cannot pick what you get in these random powerups during the loading screen.

The only real complaint that I can say about Hypersensitive Bob is the music and how it feels slightly sluggish. I felt that the range of my gun should have been ever so slightly longer by default and how I should be able to move faster or have less enemies on screen until I’m deep into the run, or have less waves of enemies until deeper into the run because it takes so much time to progress into the game and with very little health (3 hit points) from spawning into the first level, I found it to be very hard! Which is good if you’re up for a challenge.

Hypersensitive Bob is a fantastic game for the price of $4.99USD. And in my experience is worth every penny, if you enjoy games like The Binding of Isaac, then you will really enjoy Hypersensitive Bob, epically at the price point it’s currently at. I found myself playing Hypersensitive Bob longer than I thought I would and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it; besides the dying part, that was kind annoying. I recommend Hypersensitive Bob as a hidden gem in the indie game market, and an absolute STEAL for $4.99 USD.

Whippy gives Hypersensitive Bob a Drastik Measure 8 out of 10 (80).

PROS:

• Excellent level design
• Very fun gameplay
• Powerups
• Challenging
• $4.99

CONS:

• Slightly sluggish
• Mismatching Music