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.Bulb BoyOne gloomy night, Bulb Boy wakes suddenly from a frightening nightmare to discover that evil has overshadowed the Bulbhouse. Bulb Boy is a horror Point-and-Click Game by Bulbware. It was first released for PC in 2015, and was then ported to iOS and Android in 2016, to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in 2017, and to Playstation 4 in 2018. Its website can be found here.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Videogame/BulbBoy

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Bulb Boy is a horrorPoint-and-Click Game by Bulbware. It was first released for PC in 2015, and was then ported to iOS and Android in 2016, to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in 2017, and to Playstation 4 in 2018.

This game contains examples of:

• Adult Fear: Grandpa-raffin gets taken by the dark at the beginning of the game, leaving Bulb Boy on his own for most of it.
• Body Horror: Many of the monsters including your grandpa at the end, upon being mutated by the dark presence infesting the house and the surrounding area.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Bulb Boy faces all sorts of horrific monstrosities throughout the game, mainly tricking them into disposing of themselves using his wits, but he takes this to an almost-literal level when he single-handedly destroys the EldritchParasite that transformed Grandpa-raffin into the final boss...by licking its eyeball.

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• Down the Drain: Bulb Boy's head gets flushed and he spends a level underwater.
• Foreshadowing: If Bulb Boy looks out the window at the beginning you can get a creepy mask and the message 'She is coming'; the mask is part of a later miniboss monster. Also, Bulb Boy hugs his beloved stuffed rabbit, only for it to begin to mutate as soon as he leaves the room... Later, the bubbled objects at the end of the flashback breather levels usually foreshadow a monster in the next level, as the evil presence twists Bulb Boy’s dreams into nightmares.
  • The first flashback shows a prepared chicken. Shortly after, you find a (much bigger and meaner) chicken which isn’ttoohappy about Grandpa-raffin taking its head.
  • The second flashback shows a worm which had been used as fishing bait. When Bulb Boy’s head is flushed, he finds the now-mutated and very hungry worms are ready for some payback.
  • The third flashback shows the single strawberry grown from Grandpa-raffin’s greenhouse. Said strawberry grew a little toowell, and Bulb Boy must save Mothdog from being melted into plant food by the strawberry’s acidicvomit.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Dark Presence in spades. It's never made clear exactly what it is but it turns whatever it affects into horrific monters. You can be sure to qualify the resulting monsters themselves as mentioned above. And boy, oh boy, is this nowhere better shown than the finale in which Grandpa Raffin is mutated into a hideous monstrosity that's even uglier on the inside than it is on the outside. It's unknown if the parasite possessing Grandpa is the Dark Presence or once of its creations but that doesn't make it any less dangerous. And it'll turn Bulb Boy into a monster himself if it manages to spit in his mouth!

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• Heroic Mime: Nobody in the game speaks a word of decipherable dialogue, save for indistinct babble illustrated through speech bubbles, though you can sometimes make out the word 'Grandpa?' when Bulb Boy is calling out for Grandpa-raffin.
• Infant Immortality: Painfully averted, should one of the numerous denizens of the dark get their hands on our hero. The dog version of the trope can also occur on at least two occasions, should you fail to save Mothdog from the Mutant Strawberry or Grandpa-raffin’s various attacks during his rampage.
• Killer Teddy Bear: The evil presence takes over Bulb Boy's favorite stuffed rabbit, mutating it into a misshapen beast which hunts for prey using ambulatory limbs formed from its own snot. It nearly devours Bulb Boy's separated body until he and Mothdog distract it with some more enticing food: a trapped swarm of carnivorous moths.
• Light Is Good: Literally in this case, as our protagonist has a lightbulb for a head. Subverted in the case of the decoy set by the Alien-possessed and severely-mutated Grandpa-raffin.
• Losing Your Head: An actual game mechanic. Bulb Boy can harmlessly detach his head in order to access hard-to reach places, interface with chandeliers, pilot a suit of armor like a surrogate body, and even take over a dead fish and a living spider in a rare heroic example of Puppeteer Parasitism. Note that, while Bulb Boy can survive having his head removed, having it smashed is another thing entirely...
• Meaningful Name: Bulb Boy has a lightbulb for a head, while Grandpa-raffin, Bulb Boy's grandfather, has one that is an old-fashioned paraffin lamp. They live with their faithfulpet, Mothdog.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Bulb Boy's Mothdog, which you can take control of in some parts of the game.
• Moth Menace: As they rush back to the Bulbhouse to try to rescue Grandpa-raffin, Mothdog and Bulb Boy are knocked out of the air by a swarm of carnivorous moths with batlike fangs and wings. They're encountered later, but, using clever manipulation of light, are baited into getting themselves stuck in a giant glob of snot, themselves used as bait to distract the mutant rabbit toy.
• Toilet Humor: Bulb Boy can cook and then eat one of the monsters (a mutated, decapitated yet still still alive giant plucked chicken) which results in him getting stomach pains and needing to use the bathroom... and then pooping out another monster. There's also needing to cause gas buildup in a large frog in one of the flashbacks, causing it to fart itself into the distance and out of your way.
• Womb Level: How you defeat the final boss.

Bulb Boy

Bulb Boy Download

Bulb Boy is a 2Dpoint-and-clickhorroradventurevideo game developed and published by Bulbware and released on PC in 2015, on Android and iOS in 2016. The Nintendo Switch was released in North America on July 6, 2017, in the PAL region on July 13, 2017, and in Japan on July 20, 2017 . On October 6, 2017, it was released worldwide for the Xbox One. And it was released on PlayStation 4 on March 1, 2018.

Reception[edit]

Review aggregatorMetacritic gave the Switch version of Bulb Boy a score of 75 out of 100, indicating 'generally favorable reviews'.^[2] Writing for Nintendo World Report, Justin Nation gave the game an 8/10. He praised the game's artstyle, positively comparing it to the work of The Ren & Stimpy Show creator John Kricfalusi calling the visuals 'a lot of fun'. He also praised the music, feeling that it was 'appropriately themed' and helped 'reinforce what's on the screen nicely'. The touch controls were similarly lauded, with Nation calling the game 'easy to pick up' as a result. Of the few gripes Nation had with Bulb Boy, its short length was one of them. He also bemoaned one instance where a control option wasn't clear to him, causing a puzzle to stump him for the 'wrong reason'.^[4]

Ryan Craddock of Nintendo Life, similarly gave the Nintendo Switch version of Bulb Boy a positive review, citing its 'successful mixture of ideas' which 'see you doing different things as you progress through the story.' Craddock also praised its 'simple' controls, noting that while the lack of touchscreen input in a point-and-click style game might seem like a 'missed opportunity', it meant that players would have the same experience whether in handheld or TV mode. Positive mention was also given to the game's final boss, which Craddock felt 'offered a slightly different experience that was put together nicely'. He ultimately gave the game a 'great' rating of 8/10 concluding that while it may be short, it was 'clearly lovingly put-together' and managed to 'refreshingly' make horror 'cute and fun, rather than take itself seriously'.^[5]

References[edit]

Bulb Boy Wiki

1. ^'Bulb Boy for PC Reviews'. Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 4 August 2018.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
2. ^ ^ab'Bulb Boy for Switch Reviews'. Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 14 November 2017.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
3. ^Dotson, Carter (29 July 2016). ''Bulb Boy' Review – This Little Light of Mine, I'm Gonna Let it Shine'. TouchArcade. Retrieved 4 August 2018.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
4. ^Nation, Justin (6 July 2017). 'Bulb Boy Review - Review - Nintendo World Report'. Nintendo World Report. Retrieved 14 November 2017.
5. ^Craddock, Ryan (6 July 2017). 'Review: Bulb Boy'. Nintendo Life. Retrieved 14 November 2017.

External links[edit]