Bambas! is Untitled Shoes Game
The trailer for Bambas! starts off innocently enough. It's an "innovative urban walking simulator" in which you play a disembodied pair of shoes, individually moved with a controller's analog sticks and trigger buttons. The first half of the trailer is all whimsy and playground fun - kicking a football, standing on a climbing frame, riding a skateboard. But then a note of darkness creeps in, as the player begins to channel the sheer nihilistic inconsequentiality of a world in which shoes have no thinking human bodies to restrain them.
The final 30 seconds of the trailer are an appalling display of sneakers kicking cars to death, flip-flops stamping on defenceless sandcastles, and stilettos flagrantly holding up traffic at zebra crossings. It's just as well the video is only a minute long, because the escalation curve is clear. If this were a four minute gameplay overview, the last third would consist of shoes vindictively toeing the Declaration Of Independence, or nudging lost kittens into jet engines.
Bambas! - yes, the exclamation mark is part of the title - is the work of Villena, Spain-based Devilish Games, who say it isn't just a game but "a tribute to urban culture". You can find it on Steam. Come release day in 2025, the game will "break stereotypes with its non-linear narrative and environmental storytelling, where stories unfold around every corner". You will "discover hidden spots that hold secrets and characters that will lead you down unexpected paths".
The game's setting is "a vibrant, detailed Mediterranean coastal city where creativity rules and exploration is your passport to fun", a place of Jet Set Radio-ish abandon where "you'll need to navigate crosswalks, kick cans, balance on curbs, and pull off impossible jumps to complete hundreds of challenges". It all looks and sounds very jolly - far from the Qwoppy puzzler I was half-expecting from the press release, and more in keeping with the mayhem of Untitled Goose Game.
Complete those challenges,
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