Puzzle games have never been as explosive as Bomb Club Deluxe. Quite literally. The premise is in the title: a group of bomb fans set up a club to experiment with explosives safely, but someone has gone and effed it all up.
The group look like characters from Fortnite, only with enlarged bombs for heads and futuristic sounding names such as Ian or Blake. They take their club pretty darn seriously, even if they’re a bunch of loveable goofballs, so someone ruining it for everyone else needs to be sorted.
Bomb Club Deluxe is a big game. There are about 200 levels in the game (all handcrafted), and while the first stages are easy-peasy, future levels are fiendish. There might be a Bomberman comparison because of the obvious bomb reference and levels of cute, but unlike the wacky multiplayer, the gameplay is stripped down: blow up all the bombs on screen in a chain, or die trying. That death bit is exaggerated.
How Antoine Latour and Lozange Lab have introduced new mechanics makes the game worthwhile. There are around 20 bombs to collect and a handful of hats that ‘modify’ them. Every time a new bomb or hat is introduced, you’ll get to experiment with the new feature.
I won’t list all the bombs, but they range from standard bombs to Megabombs that need to be hit multiple times until they explode, and Magma bombs that blow up EVERYTHING on the same group of tiles. Chuck in these hats, like the party hat that triggers a bomb to go up in smoke if it ‘witnesses’ another explosion, and you have a good deal of variety.
There are a handful of bombs at your disposal, with a few already placed on the screen. You can put those in your possession more or less anywhere, but you have to use them all, and they ALL have to explode in the chain. There’s an infinite number of retries, and at the end, you’ll get rated bronze, silver or gold.
There aren’t any time constraints, and you can play around as much as you like. This is one of the biggest appeals of Bomb Club Deluxe. That said, there are some variations to the levels, such as timed stages where you have to beat as many stages while the clock continues to tick.
Other than the target bombs, there will be fireworks and additional coloured bombs to add to your multiplier. These aren’t essential for level completion but will help improve your rating/for the completionists. That said, you can glide through the early sections doing the minimal amount, but where’s the fun in that?
Visually, Bomb Club Deluxe is quite simple, but that’s precisely what it needs as the focus is on strategy, not cell shaders. All the bombs are super cute, and that’s coming from an alpha male. I lie; I’m not remotely an alpha. As for the Bomb Club members, they’re excellent, and I enjoyed their dialogue scenes. These can all be skipped if required, but again, where’s the fun in that?
Looking at the world map will initially be quite overwhelming, and I felt up against it when getting this done in time for the release date, what with the Steam Next Fest and all. As mentioned, you can take a few shortcuts to get through, but I found myself returning to complete as many stages as possible and see as much gold on the map as possible. There’s also a journal – the Nitromonicon, which is a refresher on the bombs and hats.
My writing has slid a little these past few days as I was inundated with demos to play, plus trying to fit in some me-time. As a result, this Bomb Club Deluxe review isn’t as good as I’d hoped, but that’s on me, not the game.
I adore this game, and it’s now one of my favourite puzzle games. I genuinely didn’t realise how much fun I’d have with this. Even the music, while pretty much annoying with catchy upbeat tunes, wore me down, and I ended up looking forward to the little jingles – especially the countdown to each stage where the bombs will blow up to the beat of the drums…
TWO thumbs up. Love it, love it, love it.
