BOKURA: Planet on course for early 2025 arrival

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Co-op-only side-scrolling sequel promises "completely different" gameplay experience than 2023 predecessor

With over half a million downloads, it's safe to say that tokoronyori's 2023 co-op puzzler BOKURA was a success. A sequel seemed inevitable, then, and surely one that wouldn't mess with a winning formula, right? Wrong! Well, right about the sequel, and even about a similar basic premise, but the upcoming BOKURA: planet promises a "completely different" gameplay experience than its predecessor. 

Long after mankind all but destroyed itself, the last remnants of the human race managed to start all over again from a new Stone Age. Eventually civilizations grew and once more enabled exploration of the cosmos. But interplanetary travel takes hundred of years, so only those "condemned to death row" are chosen for one-way journeys to faraway planets. On one such mission, the research ship breaks down and "two crew members must make an emergency escape," crash-landing on the surface of an "unknown red planet." Each convict has their own reasons for wanting to return to Earth, but it's going to take their combined efforts working together if they're to escape their predicament. 

At first glance, BOKURA: planet looks like a virtual carbon copy of the original game, with its side-scrolling environments and slightly muted pixel art colour palette. And indeed, it is another two-player-only co-op adventure that requires communication between players on different devices to succeed. But that's where the similarities end and the differences begin. Unlike in BOKURA, here the two characters share the same reality rather than altered individual versions of it, but cooperation is still necessary to overcome the obstacles in their path. However, the protagonists aren't so much partners as they are strangers looking out for their own self-interests who are suddenly thrust together by circumstance. As such, your attempt to get off the planet becomes a "journey through doubts and decisions" as well, and the added ability to PUSH the other character means that players must "not only work together, but anxiously navigate the possibility of confrontation." 

We're still several months away from the release of BUKURA: planet, but it's hurtling fast towards us, with an expected launch on Steam sometime in early 2025 for Windows and Mac.