Bubsy is back with Bubsy 4D, and the news alone was likely capable of both striking terror and causing joy in the hearts of many, depending on whether they consider the original games as masterpieces or as a complete mess. Yes. I know people in both camps.
Personally, I had and continue to have no strong opinion. It was a different time, and I feel that many judge the series with the eyes of today (or whatever time they heard about it, which is still much after its original release). It has the spark to make it interesting, but it fell short in the delivery, although I maintain that it wasn’t nearly as awful as many make it out to be.
Incidentally, no. I’m not going to apologize for the pun in the headline, nor am I going to particularly mind if it makes the article less searchable. If you’ve been reading our articles (or our original mission statement), you probably already know that we don’t care if Google likes our work or not. We just hope you do.
At Gamescom, I tested Bubsy 4D under the guidance of two of its developers, and learned that no one from the original development team is directly involved in creating this new game.
That’s likely a good thing. Whether it’s a masterpiece, a disaster, or a bit of both, the original series comes with a lot of baggage.
While playing Bubsy 4D, it was pretty clear to me that the young team at Fabraz was free to pay homage to the original while leaning into their own ideas, which is how this kind of thing should be done.
The kind of game Bubsy 4D is is shown very liberally even in the tutorial level, and “easy to learn and hard to master” pretty much sums it up.
Bubsy has many techniques at his disposal, from wall-running to rolling and pouncing after a jump. Your gameplay can be as technical as your brain and reflexes allow you, but most of the sections I’ve seen can be overcome without really needing to use all the weapons in your arsenal.
If you prefer your gameplay to be relaxed, you can tackle most obstacles with a rather basic subset of the moveset. It’ll be slower and not particularly flashy, but it’ll get you through the level with relative ease, while still offering enough variety to be fun.
Yet, if you enjoy technical gameplay, you can chain skillful moves like no tomorrow, and literally breeze through the levels at hairball speed, while exhibiting your master-level cat fu.
Going fast requires a surprising level of precision, which will likely please 3D platformer enthusiasts, and it’s interesting to see that if you make mistakes, the moveset still gives you tools to save them in many situations. Since I made a lot of mistakes, I certainly appreciated this during my demo time.
Visually, Bubsy 4D is a bit on the average side. The levels are colorful, and the characters are cute, but what I saw was pretty much par for the course of what you’d expect from an indie game made in Unity.
That being said, there’s plenty of time before the release, so it’s too early to judge. Just like we’ll have to wait and see whether the cleverly broad moveset will be enough to carry the fun through a significant number of levels.
For now, though, we can say that Bubsy 4D holds the promise to be a good 3D platformer, and talking to the developers gives a certain degree of confidence that it’ll land at least in a better overall place compared to its predecessors.
Whether I’m right or not, time will tell. At the very least, it’s obvious to me that Fabraz is not relying on the nostalgia (or trauma) associated with Bubsy’s old games, but they’re trying their best to create their own Bubsy game, standing on its own merits.
Bubsy 4D is coming in 2026 for basically every platform with a chip inside, PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Switch 2.
If you’d like to hear more, you can watch our interview with Atari Senior Director of Sales and Marketing David Lowey.
