Buddy Simulator 1984 – Review

Buddy Simulator 1984 created by Not a Sailor Studios is an immersive experience that simulates hanging out with a new best friend. Your new buddy learns and adapts its games to suit you and your interests to make it as fun as it can be. This is what it is on the surface, but deep down it’s a chilling and secret filled story with twists at every turn.

I first came across the game when I scrolled through the game library for my Steam Family; I always turn to it when I’m in search of a new game to keep my attention for a few hours. Without reading the description or anything, I installed the game. And wow, this game really took me for a ride. It was like getting on a kid’s rollercoaster and finding out it lifts you up 100ft in the air before you just drop off the tracks!

SPOILERS FOR EARLY GAMEPLAY – READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

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When I first booted up the game, I honestly thought it would just be a typing game where you answered questions and played simple games, but after my new buddy, which I named ‘Hamburber’, shut off the game application to work on a better game for us to play, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued.

My buddy Hamburber had made a brand new game, instead of running ‘Buddy Simulator 1984’ like I had done before, I was told to run ‘The Adventure of Jay’ (name depends on what you answer to the question at the start). And it was completely different from Hangman or Guess the Number like before, this new game had a story. It started off as a simple text game, where it told the story through words and you typed out what you wanted to do, but somehow, even through words, I would still get a chill every time something unusual happened.

But the game only continued to change, turning from words to an actual 2D game, where a little ghost looking thing acted as a visual for the player. I navigated around the area that I had just explored in the text version of the story, seeing everything in a new way. Hamburber wanted to expand the world even more by traveling on a boat to a town nearby, obviously I had to go in search of a paddle to use said boat though, but of course it is hidden at the end of a dark and dingy cave. With the game now changed to a visual one, it couldn’t scare me through words anymore, but through the visuals itself; the environment would glitch and shift, making me cover my eyes in fear of what could potentially happen. This is what happened inside the cave, the world around me glitched, fear growing inside as I delved deeper, only to find that there was nothing to be scared of, yet the fear would stay as I had to turn back.

After this point, the game would spiral, gripping my attention at every little detail that was thrown at me. And I loved every second of it.

GAMEPLAY

Now, I was only planning to play the game for about an hour at most, just something to pass some time. But the story the game was telling was too interesting for me to stop; there were so many different routes to take and hidden secrets to find all of the juicy lore this game had to offer… which is why I spent a little over 6 hours playing it.

Let’s talk about the mechanics now. When the game is still text based, there is always a ‘help’ option to tell you what you can type to do what, and that was really helpful when I would forget what I was able to do. Once you finish that stage of the game and you move into the second stage where you can actually see yourself move around (I’ll get into graphics and that in the next section, so this stuff will be explained), you get a little tutorial at the start, though the controls are very much the same as many other games (WASD controls). But it got confusing for me in the third stage, where a combat system was added, before this you would just walk about and do little quests to move forward, but now you were able to fight enemies. I’m not saying this was a bad choice, I actually loved this addition, except for how you would do the attacks… Let me explain really quick; when you wanted to use an attack, a letter would be shown on the screen that you were to press to execute that attack, and depending on how long you took or if you pressed the wrong key would also effect this. For me, this was hard to do, since I have quite a slow reaction time and I found it hard to remember where some of the keys were in time to actually do the attack. Oh, and the whole ‘using a key to do an attack’ also went for when you had to block other enemy attacks, you can guess that I failed at this many times. Other than this struggle, the controls were very easy to use and I quickly adapted to the changes.

And the graphics! Where do I even start? At first, the game was just fully text based, which I thought the game would continue down that road, but when it shifted to a 2D pixel-art style where I could visually see what was going on, I can’t deny the fact that I was excited to see what was to come. Oh, and I should mention, that the changes didn’t stop there. After a while of getting used to this new style, it suddenly changed to a 2.5D style, I was speechless at this change, I was used to the 2D environment, but now it was different and I could explore the world in a new way. Each activity I done during the game after this point was even more immersive with the style shift. The game mainly stayed with these two types of graphics (placement in the game in their respective order) for the majority of the time, until the very end, where for a short amount of time it was fully 3D, and this was obviously the most immersive stage, and the way it was used to the story’s advantage had me on the end of my seat, waiting to see the world of ‘Buddy Simulator 1984’ pull any loose ends together before the inevitable end.

By the end of the game, where the screen turned dark, I was left stunned. A world I had just spent hours in… had came to an end. I was actually sat there, feeling like I had actually lost a friend. The game done a very good job at making me, the player, get attached to this new buddy, and the game’s world itself, that much that it made me feel a little sad that it had to come to an end.

Overall, I loved the game! I thought I would only play for a few hours or so and get bored, but I played for 6 hours in total and felt sad once I had to leave the world at the end. Having my own best bud make a game for me, and improve it while I was playing, I was always ready to see what would be done next. And this game is great to also replay, since you can go back and change some choices you make, and find some secrets that you may have missed the first time around. I would absolutely recommend this for anyone who enjoys a unique gameplay experience and a story filled world.

Other information (from Steam store page):

Release Date: February 18th 2021

Price: $9.99 USD/£6.99 GBP

Tags: Psychological Horror, Horror, Retro, Indie, Story Rich

Play Length: 5hrs~

Platform Availability:

• Playstation 4 & 5
• Nintendo Switch
• PC
• Xbox One & Xbox Series X/S

Written By: LouArtStuff
About: Hiya! I’m Lou! I love to play different types of games, read any genre of book, and delve a little too deep into the meaning of anything I see!
Donate: https://ko-fi.com/louartstuff

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Buddy Simulator 1984 – Loaded.Com