Full Bore Review

Life's a boar, and then you die. I can’t imagine it’s a philosophy many boars would adhere to, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Full Bore’s main characters (Frederick and Hildi) treated the phrase as gospel. Regardless of which mud-loving oink you decide to play as - they both have the same story - in Whole Hog Games’ puzzle/platformer, you’re going to quickly find yourself out of luck and put to work in a mine where things just aren’t quite right.

Asleep in an idyllic little garden paradise, you awake to the sight of a smug little butterfly pulsing its wings around you. Obviously, being a boar who loves (or hates, your choice) butterflies, you chase that mother across a field until the ground beneath your hooved feet suddenly gives way and you plummet deep into the bowels of the Earth.

What starts as a bad day only gets worse. You accidentally activate a rocket and ride it into a vault owned by Gullinbursti, an obese and lazy boar who blames you for his treasure going missing. Then he tasks you with retrieving his gems, and puts you you to work in his mines.

So begins your journey beneath the surface, and an enjoyable one at that. Full Bore’s structure can be slightly confusing at first, but once you figure out how the maze-like world of Gullinbursti’s mines work, you’ll gradually start to realise how intricately each area connects with the next. Instead of separating each stage with a menu screen, Whole Hog have chosen a different path by making each stage connect seamlessly with the next, making Full Bore feel streamlined.

While you enter the mines under the pretense of collecting lost gems, you’ll soon realise that they’re not necessary to progress. With that said, you don’t, and probably won’t want to, skip gathering them all up, as the puzzles you need to solve to grab them are what form the most enjoyable aspect of Full Bore. Most of these are logic puzzles, i.e. moving blocks into the correct position, taking care not to get them stuck or accidentally destroy them. Before you start recalling how irritating it is to have to restart similar puzzles in other games, know that your little boar protagonist can rewind time at any time if you make any glaring mistakes. Yes, I’m talking about time-travelling boars. 

If you get frustrated with how dastardly these literal thinkers become later on, you can simply choose to give them the middle finger and continue on your main journey to discover why your boar friends are acting strange. Fleshing out the strange goings on are computer terminals littered around the game which detail strange experiments and odd occurrences. The more you read, the more you’ll realise that Full Bore has a bizarre and fun story to piece together, helped in no small part by its soundtrack.

The wacky tunes complement the game well and add both tone and atmosphere to the world as a whole. One particular highlight is when you help a boar in need repair his gigantic drill and race alongside it along to some high tempo music, destroying any explosive crates in its way before it reaches them. These quick pace segments add brilliant pacing to the more considered puzzle sections - a balance not easily maintained.

The story does start to drag ever so slightly towards the end, and controls can feel a bit finicky with the keyboard (no gamepad support, sorry) when you’re trying to be precise and fast, but they don’t detract too much from the overall enjoyment factor. If you’re solely trying to reach the end credits, you can beat the game in one sitting, but collecting all the gems, computer terminals and discovering all the secret areas will easily take you into double digits territory.

It’s worth going through the world with a fine-tooth comb too, some of Full Bore’s puzzles will evoke the same dumbfounded look that the Portal games give - and the same kind of satisfaction when you figure them out. Definitely give this one a go if you’re a fan of the genre.