Wobbly Life Review

Publisher = RubberBandGames        
Developer = RubberBandGames
Release date = 16th July 2021
Genre = Open World, and Party
Platforms = Steam, and Xbox
Price = £12.99
Difficulty = 2/10
Completion difficulty = 4/10
Completion time = 20-25 hours

Wobbly Life is a fantastic addition to the ever-expanding list of physics-based games. For Wobbly Life to compete with similar games it had to create new and innovative ideas. The physics-based sandbox in Wobbly Life works brilliantly with its vast and content packed world. Wobbly Life’s open world structure was heaps of fun because I found the non-linear game design to allow for many ways to approach puzzles and jobs. One example of this happened when a puzzle required me to take an object across the map. The game let me decide how to get across the island. As a result, I found Wobbly Life’s gameplay to be more enjoyable than similar games. Fans of Human Fall Flat, Moving Out, Gang Beasts, and similar titles will relish the freedom and enthralling gameplay Wobbly Life has to offer.

Wobbly Life is an open world sandbox, which uses funny physics to create interesting trial and error puzzles and hilarious slapstick movement. The gameplay will task you to drive, fly, and stumble through a beautiful and captivating world teaming with quests and secrets to be discovered. You’ll start your playthrough without an objective and therefore it’s up to the player to decide what to do, at their own pace. Wobbly Life has 15 unique and replayable jobs to play and discover. These jobs act as mini games, which provide you money for your efforts. These can range from mindless fun to intense exhilarating puzzles. I loved most of these jobs, but some aren’t without their flaws. As I explored the world map, I learnt that I could buy pets, houses, and even vehicles. This always enticed me to return to previous jobs for more money. Wobbly Life’s physics-based gameplay makes nearly every challenge a treat to complete.

Does Wobbly Life provide a fresh and enjoyable experience?

Wobbly Life is made up of 4 sections for the player to explore: traveling through the jungle area gives a mysterious and mystical tone, the Mainland is the heart of Wobbly Island and is a lively residential area with many tourist attractions, peacefully trek through the quiet farmland, and journey past the teeming with conspiracy Mountains. Designers of Wobbly Life really cared for the game’s map layout. This is apparent when looking at how distributed the jobs and quests are in each area. There are banks, shops, jobs, secret bases, and flyable planes spread across the island for you to use at your own leisure.

You play as a yellow cartoony like character, who is kicked out of their grandma’s house for not having a job. Wobbly Life’s story ends there unless you expand on it, and this sets the tone for the rest of your adventure. Wobbly Life felt overwhelming when I first opened the world map, but Seeing Wobbly Island gave me a sense of freedom not found in many other games. I found the game always letting me decide what to do next. In that regard, Wobbly Life provides a huge twist from the usual linear physics-based games.

During your playthrough you’ll unlock dozens of hats, tops, and trousers for you to stumble around in. All these outfits serve as fantastic rewards for completing puzzles and secrets. These clothes often have risible designs, which when mixing outfits together would have hilarious outcomes. My favourite outfit was the dinosaur trousers, sloth hat, and lab coat. This outfit was just one of many comedic outfit combinations. However, this is my favourite outfit because the clothes were unusual and funny, which is a theme with many costumes in Wobbly Life.

As you explore, you’ll discover many interesting jobs. Jobs in Wobbly Life serve as mini games and puzzles, which use silly physics to challenge the player. These diverting mini games are often immensely rewarding. Each job is unique as their objectives reflect their surroundings. For example, in the lively city, some jobs reflect the tone of the big city by having you deliver items such as Pizza or Jelly. I find jobs to be enjoyable because the challenges were designed with the clumsy gameplay in mind. Therefore, my favourite jobs are the ones which task the player to overcome puzzles using physics. In the Mainland, the burger job, which requires you to clumsily grab ingredients to make a burger, stands out as a fantastic use of physics puzzle solving. I overcame the challenge by carefully not putting the wrong ingredient into the burger. These jobs reward you with money, which you can spend on a plethora of things in each part of the world map. Having a lot of purchasable items encouraged me to return to jobs. However, I found myself utilizing vehicles often while traveling across Wobbly Island.

Vehicles are accessible everywhere on the map. They are extremely easy and fun to drive, making travel across the island a breeze. Wobbly Life relies heavily on the vehicles being delightfully enjoyable and easy to use. This is because exploration is such a key part of the game, and vehicles provide a quick way of navigating Wobbly Island. Wobbly Life provides a variety of vehicles. There are 3 types of cars: a fast car, an average speed car, and a slow speed car. The slower the vehicle is the easier it can carry items safely. However, the flying vehicles are slightly less varied. Unfortunately, the flying vehicles are quite spaced out on the map. However, the player can use ziplines, hot air balloons, and the train to also travel. Wobbly Life has jobs that will test your driving in boats, cars, and planes. These jobs are races and are incredibly fun to hectically blast through. Beating them can be very rewarding to the player. As Wobbly Life is an open world game, I’m thankful they did a marvellous job implementing vehicles.

In the Mainland of Wobbly Island, you’ll encounter jobs and optional objectives reflecting a city’s atmosphere. This lively city is home to residential areas, races, and shopping. Most of the jobs here reflect the tone of the big city by having you deliver and make food or help friendly civilians. Fortunately, traveling through the city is a breeze with the abundance of cars for you to use. Wobbly Life’s map also makes use of other means of transport: ziplines allow you to travel far but can only be used to go downwards, cannons shoot your character forward but lack control, the train travels at high speeds but only around the outskirts of the city. I used the ziplines the most as I could hang onto an item while traveling on them. I found this useful in many of the delivery jobs. Another mechanic in Wobbly Life is owning a home. Buying a home gives you small perks such as allowing you to spawn there, letting you spawn in your purchased vehicles, leaving your pets at home, and gives you access to a wardrobe. I like this idea as it rewards the player for buying a house. However, it doesn’t provide too much that it makes players feel obliged to buy a house instead of other purchasable perks. I chose to buy a house after purchasing a pet dog, who I also named Scruffy. I found myself visiting the city often due to the cheerful environment and plethora of jobs. Furthermore, the Mainland is jam packed with character customization.

The snow-filled North of Wobbly Island has lifeless mountains, sequestered laboratories full of conspiracy, runways with trailblazing technology, tranquil towns, and more waiting to be explored. This location is unobtrusive to the residents of Wobbly Island, but the player will make many abnormal discoveries as they explore these desolate lands. Jobs here are challenging, which helps represent the difficult lives residents of the North Land have. Wobbly Life has hidden side missions for players looking for a challenge, these side objectives are hidden everywhere on Wobbly Island. However, they aren’t easy to locate. Side missions in the North can offer many great rewards such as a UFO, a ghost pet, and much more that I won’t spoil. However, many side missions have you backtracking to other places and back, which can become quite tedious with the lack of fast travel. This is only a small problem, because Wobbly Life has such a beautiful and exploration focused world.

Life echoes throughout the beautiful, lush Jungle of Wobbly Island. This captivating jungle is teeming with secrets shrouded by fog, ancient buildings as old as time, an air base mysteriously looming over the land in secrecy, pyramids designed to kill intruders, and more left to be discovered. The Jungle is mysterious because of the secrecy surrounding it. Furthermore, even the gameplay here reflects the tone of the jungle as many secrets can be discovered, which will all reward the player greatly.

Wobbly Life’s visuals are charming and detailed. The game looks and plays like a cartoon. Fortunately, these cartoon visuals appeal to both adults and children. The visuals brilliantly combine the humorous gameplay with light-hearted visuals. Wobbly Life’s visuals are very simplistic, but the colours are amazingly detailed leading to some very pretty visuals. In conclusion, the game’s visuals are reminiscent of the Simpsons or Human Fall Flat.

Wobbly Life has some beautiful sounding songs. Music is plentiful with some excellent music tracks for every job, each conveying the theme of the job perfectly. The abundance of music stops the songs from becoming too repetitive. Wobbly Life is a peaceful game with a light-hearted nature and the music’s calming/relaxing tone emphasises this. The music varies greatly from job to job. For example, the emergency job gives the player a sense of panic to reach their patient post-haste. However, the plane races have calming tunes to fit the quiet peaceful sky. Although every song in Wobbly Life is unique and fantastic, my favourite must be the race songs.

The animations in Wobbly Life are elegant and humorous to watch. Your animations are each unique and funny allowing for slapstick comedy. The animations are smooth and reflect the gameplay. This is because your inputs activate beautiful animations that happen seamlessly. One time I noticed the animation quality was when I fell out of a hot air balloon. I couldn’t help but notice how clumsy, foolish, and silly my character looked while falling. However, I found just watching my character plummet to the ground because of my mistake to be immensely funny. The animations are packed with moments that highlight how good they are.

Wobbly Life includes well implemented multiplayer. Multiplayer in Wobbly Life is fantastic, each job and side quest are adapted to work well with more players. Wobbly Life is even more fun while playing with friends. Experience everything Wobbly Life has to offer with up to 4 players.

Is Wobbly Life worth your money?

Wobbly Life shows that physics-based puzzles don’t have to be linear. Games such as Human Fall Flat rely on linear puzzles and have limited puzzle solutions. Wobbly Life combines the linear physics puzzles with exploration and physics based mini games. The temple is an example of linear puzzles within the open world. However, the linearity doesn’t prevent the player from finding obscure secrets or unlocking cool rewards for their efforts. Most jobs are small mini games that once again reward the player with money to spend on things in Wobbly Island. These jobs are enjoyable because they're designed with the clumsy physics in mind. The open world is visually stunning, and some jobs even implement a little bit of exploration. Wobbly Island is full of secrets to find, which ultimately expands the world. In conclusion, Wobbly Life takes inspiration from great games but implements an enticing new formula.

I was looking forward to playing Wobbly Life as I love physics-based games. However, I was pleasantly surprised to learn this game is quite unique. It's open world approach of including both linear and exploration focused puzzles immediately sets Wobbly Life apart from other games like it. What I found most enjoyable was the mindless fun physics. No matter if you're exploring, or solving linear challenges, silly physics will test your problem-solving abilities. These feel amazing to overcome and Wobbly Life will give plenty of rewards to keep you enticed. Although most obstacles aren't too challenging, you'll still encounter some truly brain tingling puzzles. In my opinion, wobbly Life is no doubt a fun game, and its content was consistently good. Travel could be slow, but I didn’t find it detracting from the core experience. In conclusion, I can say without a doubt that Wobbly Life has surpassed other physics games. For just £12.99 Wobbly Life can provide an enjoyable 20+ hour experience. Give this hidden gem of a game a chance.

Wobbly Life final score = 94/100
In my opinion, Wobbly Life is the definition of a hidden gem in gaming.



Wobbly Life - Treasure Hunt (dlc)
Release date = 13 August 2021
Completion time = 3-4 hours
Price = free dlc
Completion difficulty = 4/10

Revisit the Wobbly Island again with Wobbly Life’s dlc. Explore, discover secrets, earn new rewards, and hunt treasure in this free innovative dlc. Treasure hunting in this game is a treat to play. Everything in this dlc has been made with love and care. This is apparent when considering this version has significantly less bugs, and every new mechanic is accurate and precise to use. These new features help make Wobbly Life even more enjoyable. The 3 new jobs all are for treasure hunting and allow you to have a variety of beautiful environments to hunt in. Furthermore, the dlc introduces difficulty levels to the new jobs. I always chose hard mode because the metal detector was fun to use and very useful. The most important change in this update is the introduction of the museum. Wobbly Life's open world was always packed with things to do, but this update’s museum truly embraces the exploration of this well-designed world.

Wobbly Life’s new dlc has some of the best gameplay mechanics in Wobbly Life. The treasure hunting was implemented near perfectly to allow for fast and precise gameplay. Using the metal detectors is extremely enjoyable, and the new difficulties are once again an amazing addition. Having fun gameplay is important, but Wobbly Life’s treasure hunting also entices the player with fantastic rewards and satisfying progression. Therefore, having fun gameplay stops the process of collecting from becoming a grind, and instead it becomes an addicting process that you can’t stop loving. The main reason the update is so fun is because of the museum. The museum gives a wonderful sense of accomplishment and progression. In the museum you’re free to look around, plan your next treasure hunt, deposit treasures, and check your collection progress. This free dlc has been loved, and it has ameliorated the base game.

Additional content

Wobbly Life’s Treasure Hunt dlc is addicting. Wobbly Life is a very rewarding game, and the dlc is just as gratifying. The new content is difficult, but overcoming it will give you amazing new outfits, pets, and cars. The collecting of items is a tedious process but becoming a step closer to an awesome reward is immensely satisfying. The new gameplay mechanics work smoothly allowing for difficult but fair gameplay. The reason the gameplay is difficult is because when doing the new job, you’re not guaranteed to find the treasures you want. Some players might find this annoying. However, I thought it only enhanced the gameplay, because it made me want to keep playing and exploring for the item I needed. Furthermore, I loved the metal detector and how it functioned. The beeping was accurate and precise allowing for the player to get a little lost but never frustrated. However, the dlc heavily relies on backtracking from the job to the museum. The backtracking isn’t the problem, but the character walks slowly and most flying vehicles don’t include a way to carry items. This wasn’t that problematic thanks to the cars in the Mainland of Wobbly Life and ziplines in the Mountains. It was mostly a problem in the Jungle. In conclusion, Wobbly Life’s dlc will reward you for persevering through the challenges it throws at you, which makes for immensely satisfying gameplay.

Treasure hunting in Wobbly Life is incredible. Prior to this update I didn’t know Wobbly Life needed treasure hunting. However, after playing the dlc I can say this is a fantastic addition, which only improves on the base game. The treasure hunting has been implemented brilliantly to make it fun and addicting to play. My favourite part of the new dlc was seeing the progression of the museum. It gave me a brilliant sense of accomplishment, and it also compelled me to continue hunting for treasure. However, the lack of flying vehicles, which carry items, makes travel between the museum and jobs monotonous. My favourite moment was when my treasure fell out of my vehicle into the ocean. Although annoying this was extremely funny looking back at how I approached delivering the treasure. I hope everyone comes back to experience this and future updates to Wobbly Life. The new content is free and provides hours of fun for you to enjoy. There are tons of treasures, pets, vehicles, and secrets for you to unlock. In conclusion, if you want more fun times with Wobbly Life come play Wobbly Life's Treasure Hunt free dlc.

Wobbly Life's Treasure Hunt free DLC final score = 75/100
Treasure hunting is a fun addition to Wobbly Life and a little addicting to play.


Links.
For gameplay on RubberBandGames’ titles.
http://www.twitch.tv/stealthdavid
Stay up to date with reviews, streams, and achievement hunts.
https://twitter.com/StealthDavid
http://www.twitter.com/stealth_troy
Wobbly Life achievement guide.
https://youtube/znMPJO-81Os


Wobbly Life purchase links.
Buy Wobbly Life for Xbox.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/wobbly-life/9ns86bq33spx?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
Buy Wobbly Life for Steam.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1211020/Wobbly_Life/


Reviewed by Troy Thompson. 09/08/21
Game code provided by RubberBandGames for review purposes.

Wobbly Life trailer.