Burrito Bison: Launcha Libre Review

I have a long love affair with Burrito Bison, ever since the first game appeared on Kongregate in 2011, by developer Juicy Beast. A physics-based upgrade game, which featured a luchador splatting numerous gummy bears, whom as a race had decided to kidnap him. After his escape, the sequel Burrito Bison Revenge (released a year later) picks up minutes later when he has to return to Candy Land to retrieve his wallet.

I played those games many times over the years, and annoyingly seem to have missed the release of Burrito Bison: Launcha Libre, back in September, and the app launch in November. Taking place some time after the first two games, Bison is once more headed to the supermarket -- this time armed with a cookbook full of his favourite recipes. Suddenly, gummy bears burst out of a portal and run amok: and one steals the book.

Burrito Bison launches himself from a wrestling ring, and to get a boost you can aim for one of five bosses, each of which have a health bar and cycle as you purchase them. Once the health bar is empty, you get a bunch of cash which you also get from smashing gummies on each launch, and for smashing through cookie & cake walls which separate the five sections between the store and the gummy in charge. You spend the money on upgrades to your luchadors, buying and upgrading types of gummies and bosses, and upgrading the special items.

Yes, I said luchadors plural, as Burrito Bison teams up with new friends: Pineapple Spank and El Pollo. Each has a special move which fires them down at the ground, pounding gummies and avoiding any slowdown. Bison has rocket-pants, Spank has a grappling hook and Pollo flies a short distance. Each require a different strategy, and Pollo is the best because he can fly, don’t argue.

Go, El Pollo!

The special items which you can upgrade are gained from piñatas; money, chillis, more rockets, time-limited money doubling, extra boss damage or money off vouchers for the upgrades. You can either capture a piñata as you bounce through town, or every three hours you gain one in the upgrade screen. If you don’t claim it in three hours it won’t carry forward, so don’t try to stack them. The piñatas you capture are where the adverts come in, agreeing to watch one lets you pop it, and given the extra money and boosts they give you I happily do so. The free pinata you get every three hours doesn’t need you to watch an ad, but if you do then you get to pop three piñatas!

Of course, you can use the in-app purchases to remove the apps completely, give a permanent cash boost and all of those lovely type of features, instead. Occasionally you will be offered a discount off of an in-app purchase, but it doesn’t usually remind you more than once every few days.

Bouncing on the ground hurts...

Due to the nature of being a mobile game with in-app purchases, there is no real endgame like there was in the previous two. You have to give chase by bouncing over hundreds of fleeing gummy bears and sugary-based beings. Without too many spoilers, after you reach the one that took your cookbook, you have to go through a portal to get the lost pages.

With the lost pages you can unlock real recipes, which I thought was a great touch. I’ll never make them, but that’s because I’m lazy and hesitant about trying new things, but the option is there. You can also alter reality with them by spending them on things such as flipping the game world, or change the colour of the fleeing gummies.

See? Legit salsa recipe

The final collectible you will eventually get is candy. You collect hundreds of pieces of candy to make one, and save them up. When you want to, you can unwrap them and spend them on certain upgrades to give you a boost when you time travel -- returning you to the start with no upgrades. However, getting to the end once more is much easier when you have x7 money, or start with a few thousand already in the bank.

The very smooth, adorable artwork and perfectly Mexican-themed music for Burrito Bison: Launcha Libre are absolutely spot-on. There are very well designed special gummies, such as the Prickly Pair which wears a cactus suit and you have to chase with its own space hopper to get a speed boost. Or the Hunny Potter, which wears a bee suit and carries a pot of honey, until you smash into it and roll a bunch of gummies into a honey ball before bursting out of it and decimating them all. That one’s my favourite...

I swear, the honey is in there somewhere...

I’ve been playing daily for a few weeks now, and enjoying it all. Obtaining candy is very time consuming, but I’ve time travelled twice and am building up to a third time once I’ve unlocked enough candy. It definitely has a one-more-go feeling, since you’re always so close to being able to afford another upgrade.

To increase replayability there are challenges unlocked each time you break through a cookie wall (if you have enough speed), for things such as ejecting from a Teddy Flare rocket onto another special gummy, or going a certain distance without being hurt by the ground or a cop-bear. There are also Google Play achievements -- I’m not sure whether there are any for the iOS version. Some of the achievements are labeled as Coming Soon, but there are a bunch you can get today.

There are a few Android games that I log into daily. That’s because they give me free stuff just for loading them up. Burrito Bison: Launcha Libre is one I load up to play everyday, multiple times. My four-year old daughter helps me break open the piñatas, and usually watches me bopping the gummy bears trying to escape my wrath. She doesn’t even mind Dr. Wormageddon’s gummy worm which burrows underground devouring gummies with the luchador on its back.

The good doctor is at the top of the screen

I fully recommend this game, even if the endgame doesn’t exist it’s still one of the best catapult-style games I’ve played. And I’ve played a lot of them.