Full Bore is being created by a three-man dev team at Whole Hog Games and is being published by Nkidu Games. The First Dig was previously released and those who have purchased it will get the second part of the full game, Into Hard Earth, when its released. The build I played had portions of both The First Dig and Into Hard Earth.
It’s worth pointing out the the goal of Full Bore was to create a game in which players are encouraged to explore, and not ‘worry’ about aggressive enemies, time limits, or typical gameplay elements. Everything from the lackadaisical blues rock soundtrack to the level design and gameplay suggest this. It’s not to say Full Bore doesn’t offer its own challenges, but these are almost exclusively, from what I have played, of the puzzle-variety or a ‘rush sequence’ in which you must quickly traverse an area in a strict time-limit. When you’ve managed to fail, or if you just want to start an area over, you can easily reverse time or start back at the stage checkpoint. Teleportation areas allow you to beam over to other areas that offer other NPCs and usually an altered visual theme to explore, too.
Full Bore is accessible from a controls and concept standpoint. While best played with a gamepad, you can elect to use the keyboard as well, with the WASD scheme used for digging in the corresponding directions. One of the main gameplay mechanics is digging, and finding out what surfaces you can dig through is part of the exploration element, although I found routinely encountering surfaces I could not dig through to be somewhat cumbersome. There is also something to be said for the “learning curve” (even that phrase seems a bit overkill here) I experienced in getting familiar with what surfaces I could jump to and run across. I attribute part of this to the graphics, which are intentionally old school, but despite a variety of textures and colors, the stages have a pretty consistent repetitive appearance, but at times the graphics, like the soundtrack, impress.
With NPCs to chat with at times and various logs and notes to discover, which unveil more of the story, Full Bore is story-driven in that sense, although how captivating it all is is up for debate. Personally, I didn’t get hooked on the characters nor the story, and the gameplay, at least thus far in this build, hasn’t proven fun enough to keep me playing for more than a few short stints. But given its accessibility, genre, and design that encourages exploration and revisiting areas, the casual gamer is likely to find Full Bore more appealing than I have.
Full Bore is available for purchase now from Whole Hog’s website, with the Into Hard Earth episode available sometime later this Spring.
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