Esteban is an adorable, purple-and-blue watercolor bull with a passion for art projects and an obsession with collecting decorations. Like many of us, Esteban often descends into panic-filled rage upon mounting stress and/or the slightest personal infraction. He’s a hothead, albeit one who’s fueled by honest intentions.
The symptoms of Esteban’s discontent correlate to your decisions on how to handle his interests. The primary objective of Slow Down, Bull is to make it to the end of a level by guiding Esteban to collect as many decorations as possible. Rather than directly affect Esteban’s movement, you only establish control over his possible direction; two different buttons rotate him clockwise or counter-clockwise. Each level usually has a couple checkpoints to deposit decorations along the way, the last of which serves as the level’s finish line. Ideally, all you have to do is make it through a level before time runs out.
Slow Down, Bull is very quick to introduce a winding series of complications. First are Esteban’s requisite anger issues, which manifest in the form of player indecision. Rotating Esteban and picking a direction builds an anger meter. Stress out completely and Esteban goes kind of crazy, rampaging in any direction for a few seconds of time. Additionally, each level is populated with little blue enemies that will cause Esteban to drop all un-deposited decorations. It’s a bit like Sonic losing all of his rings, albeit with the added caveat of likely crippling any sort of decent end-level score.
Esteban’s solution, and simultaneously his problem, is speed. Bouncing off walls is employed as a quick way to extinguish any pent-up frustration, but it doubles as an accelerant to Esteban’s current pace. Expectedly, this makes pushing through levels, into decorations, and around obstacles an increasingly tricky challenge. Running into puddles of water (or colliding with an enemy) cools Esteban’s anger down instantly, but it also completely reduces his speed. Slow Down, Bull’s deeper mechanics require you to spend as much time as possible in a level, so going fast is simultaneously your best friend and worst enemy. Stressed out yet?
If the answer’s a resolute, “No,” then you may like to learn what Slow Down, Bull adds to complicate Esteban’s disposition. There’s Annette the Bullcatcher, who will relentlessly pursue Esteban and take time away if she catches him. Collecting Mango the cat is a blessing and a curse, eliminating any enemy in Esteban’s path but ripping him to shreds if he holds on to her for too long. Spike the Possum distorts Esteban’s movement in exchange for a significant point bonus, and a Matador has a similar effect unless you charge—a boost by pushing both turn buttons at the same time—straight through him.
What’s interesting is how well all of Slow Down, Bull’s systems play together. Sometimes Mango needs to be deposited in a cat catcher before you can move on, and sometimes she’s there to help you clear the way. Annette is significantly annoying, but slips up for a second in puddles of water. Will you sacrifice your speed for a chance to ditch Annette, or take the risk of carrying Mango if it means you’ll be able to blaze through a portion of the opposition? Over the course of its thirty-six levels, Slow Down, Bull gives you plenty of time to figure it out.
Slow Down, Bull would have been an easier game if it didn’t manage a way to gate your general progress. Each level carries the potential to earn three different badges based on the number of decorations collected. Each of the game’s five areas are gated by a requisite number of badges. Originally this wasn’t a problem, until I hit a barrier at world three and found myself ten short of the forty needed to proceed. I had already gotten at least two badges on every level, and sometimes all three! I was annoyed at the level of perfection Slow Down, Bull seemed to be demanding, as it seemed totally out of character for a brightly colored and lovingly animated game about anger management.
As it turns out, this was also my path into discovering and exploiting some of Slow Down, Bull’s deeper mechanics. I learned that collecting stars, which sometimes pop out of specially-marked walls, builds into a decoration multiplier. Shortly thereafter, I learned that collecting as little as possible before I had the maximum 4x multiplier was a fool’s errand. Suddenly I became obsessed with getting perfect runs and carving out the most efficient paths through levels possible. I wanted to simply breeze through all of Slow Down, Bull on my path to writing a thoughtful review. Slow Down, Bull, on the other hand, wanted me to learn how to properly play it before it would let me do that.
That being said, there were plenty of times when I thought Slow Down, Bull was too aggressive with its lessons. Whether or not a multiplier star pops out of a wall is a game of chance. At least one always comes out, but whether it’s the first or fourth time your ram into the wall is a constant mystery. Likewise, the random placement of its equally random pickups (clocks that reduce your time, four leaf clovers that must be collected in succession) is occasionally unfair (a clock once appeared outside of the boundaries of the game!). I briefly considered quitting Slow Down, Bull and skipping the review altogether because I simply wasn’t having any fun figuring all of this out. It just didn’t seem worth it. With the game completed and most of my writing behind me, I’ve changed my mind, but the act of getting there is going to drive away a number of casually interested players.
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe a game about frustration needs to express some fourth-wall breaking level of personal frustration to understand the nature of frustration. Slow Down, Bull calls to mind Where is my Heart?, a multilayered platforming game founded on the creator’s experience of getting lost in the woods with family members. Where is my Heart?’s creatures were cute and adorable, but tough to work with, simulating the malaise acquired when you’re extremely pissed-off with people you’re bound to love. I don’t think Slow Down, Bull operates with the same strength of metaphor or general measure of success, but it does find value in creating cute and cuddly protagonist beset by all-too-common anger issues.
However you look at it, $5.99 isn’t a hard trigger to pull for what Slow Down, Bull is prepared to offer. It’s even easier when Insomniac is donating 50% of the game’s proceeds to the Starlight Children’s Foundation. On a meta level it’s interesting to see Insomniac officially release a game born through unrelated experimentation by one of its designers (sort of like Ubisoft Reflection’s Grow Home, released earlier this year), and it’s even better when they’re tossing half the profits to charity. All of this certainly doesn’t excuse Slow Down, Bull’s manic shortcomings, but it does make them easier to process.
