Image credit: ELDELIC GAMES
Mascot horror is a varied genre, with games that veer towards stealth and others that prioritize action. Inky Blinky Bob falls into the latter category, offering hot air balloon-based violence, unreal landscapes, and some wickedly fun creature designs.
As someone who’s spent a lot of time in the genre, Inky Blinky Bob managed to feel like a breath of fresh air, despite hitting a few rough patches in places. Here’s a full, spoiler-free review of everything to expect from this strange gem.
Mascot horror madness
Inky Blinky Bob is strange and unusual. You start the game flying towards what seems to be the aurora borealis while a character named Ralph speaks with you over the radio.
Before long, though, the plane ends up going down for mysterious reasons, leading to your character being pulled from the flaming wreckage and dragged across an island. Just an everyday occurrence for the main character, judging by their lack of reaction.
What follows is a kaleidoscope of occult horror, complete with flying beasts, an evil corporation with a mysterious lab, and a weaponized hot-air balloon. It’s a fairly standard horror premise – being stranded in a mysterious location, needing to help the residents of said location to defeat evil – but I found it enjoyable.
The core gameplay revolves around quests, exploration, and scavenging for supplies, all while battling beasts and helping out the inhabitants of the various islands you travel across in your hot air balloon.
The cast of characters in Inky Blinky Bob is just as odd as you might expect. The character model style had a somewhat uncanny valley energy, which fits the game’s overall theming nicely. The first character you meet, Ralph, is off-putting, and things just get stranger after meeting him.
The weaponized, machine gun-toting hot air balloon is your main source of transport as you progress throughout the game, taking you from control tower to island, getting progressively more powerful as you pick up new resources.
I enjoyed the hot air balloon transportation and combat, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t take a while to get the hang of the controls. I can see the hot air balloon being divisive for some – it’s novel and fun, but it can be fiddly in places, with plenty of sequences that’ll send you careening into trees or pylons.
At one point in the introductory sequence, I managed to fly the balloon directly into a nearby tower and promptly got stuck.
Combat in Inky Blinky Bob is fun and engaging, particularly in the earlier stages of the game. The titular Bob requires some level of strategy to defeat in the hot air balloon, with some mechanics that were surprisingly punishing in places.
Silly yet tense all at once
Something that I particularly enjoyed about Inky Blinky Bob was how it shifted in tone between being surreal and silly, and tense and action-focused.
There were some character interactions which felt like I was wandering through a fever dream – even the introductory sequence with Ralph felt hazy – but there were plenty of tense moments, too. It’s definitely more of a horror comedy, though.
Visually, Inky Blinky Bob looked good, with a dreamy skybox and gritty overworld. There was a certain uncanny charm to the NPCs, as mentioned, and I particularly enjoyed the almost steampunk style of the hot air balloon.
A minor thing that I found frustrating in the visual department was tooltip prompts that required a lengthy ‘click and hold’ to close. In the early stages of the game, tooltips would pop up, pause play, and require me to click and hold for a few seconds. The text on the tooltips was sometimes small and hard to read, too.
Performance-wise, Inky Blinky Bob ran decently and looked solid during my time with it. I didn’t come across any major bugs, crashes, or quirks while exploring, but did find frame drops in places.
While the bulk of my time with the game was on PC, I also tested it on the Steam Deck. It’s certainly playable on the Steam Deck and runs smoothly, but the controls aren’t the most intuitive. I found using the hot air balloon on the Steam Deck quite fiddly, which was unhelpful during the numerous aerial encounters.
All in all, Inky Blinky Bob is worth picking up if you’re a fan of action horror games and mascot horror as a genre. It’s surreal and charming, and despite it having a comedic tone in places, there were still some moments that made me jump or tense up. While there were a few rough moments, it was largely enjoyable.
FAQs
Inky Blinky Bob was developed and published by ELDELIC GAMES.
Yes, Inky Blinky Bob is tense with some startling moments. It’s not Silent Hill levels of scary, but it’s enjoyable as a horror fan.
No, Inky Blinky Bob is not a walking simulator. It’s an immersive, action-horror experience that requires hands-on gameplay.
Yes, Inky Blinky Bob works on Steam Deck. It’s not a super smooth experience, but it is playable, based on my experience with the game. Hopefully, it’ll be available on the Steam Machine when that launches.
