Horrific Mini-Game Mayhem in Portaboy+
There are very few feelings that compare to the serenity of sitting in the backseat of a car on a road trip and playing a poorly lit Game Boy. It’s a deep nostalgia that’s ingrained into the psyches of many early adopters of Nintendo handheld platforms. Rather than try to recreate this relaxing feeling, developers Enchae, Lumpy, and B-Knox attempted to do the exact opposite with their horrific mini-game collection known as Portaboy+.
Portaboy+ is a game that mixes survival horror with mini-games that one might see in a WarioWare title. When you first start playing, things seem normal as you attempt to complete the time mini-games using only the mouse. Each mini-game is fun to play and easy to pick up. At their base, they each have a unique challenge that adds tension in the later rounds of the game. Speaking of those later rounds, the game completely flips on its head at level 15.
After some graphical glitches and distortion, the initially simple gameplay transforms into something much more complex. The player is given the option to put down the handheld and shoot at incoming hordes of monsters that resemble the Portaboy+ itself. At this point, the player must balance maintaining their lives in the game and protecting themselves in the “real life” segments, which creates a fun and often very intense gameplay loop. If the introduction of the monsters wasn’t enough, the mini-games themselves begin to distort, making them even more difficult to navigate. Beating mini-games on the Portaboy+ gives the player coins, which allows them to buy lives for the game or more ammo to shoot at the incoming monsters.
Dealing with the monsters, the mini-games, and the currency all at once creates a perfect balance of stress and horror, which is Portaboy+’s greatest strength. You can pause the Portaboy+ console, but the approaching monsters don’t stop for anything. There are several different types of Portaboy+ monsters that the player encounters in the real-life segments, and each one lumbers towards you at a different rate. The monstrous Portaboy+’s are unsettling, but the stress of staying on top of the mini-games while fighting them off is what really makes the game so terrifying. There’s a tight time crunch and every bad decision you make feels like it can end your run in an instant. It’s an effective mechanic that makes Portaboy+ both infinitely replayable and surprisingly strategic.
While Portaboy+ could work as an endless survival experience, it does have a secret ending that can be unlocked at level 50 by doing certain tasks in the mini-games. It’s not directly alluded to in the gameplay, but there is a story that is told through the images you unlock with every ten levels you clear in the game. The story isn’t something that you need to invest in to enjoy Portaboy+, but it’s a nice touch that adds to the charm of this horror experience. The fact that the story is told in the form of images rather than text is also quite satisfying as it creates room for interpretation and says a lot about the narrative without directly saying it.
When you’re initially greeted by the smiling Portaboy+ mascot on the main menu, it may bring back memories of childhood and the countless hours of fun you had on those primitive handheld gaming consoles. However, upon starting the game, it quickly becomes apparent that playing Portaboy+ will be an entirely different monster altogether. The way in which Portaboy+ not only subverts expectations but also creates a tense and strategic gameplay mechanic in the process, is what makes it a powerful and rewarding survival horror experience.