There are puzzle games that ask you to think outside the box. Then there’s Yerba Buena, which seems more interested in letting you throw the entire box across the street, turn it invisible, and bounce off it like a trampoline.
Launching today on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and PC for £19.99, the latest release from Focus Entertainment and Mad About Pandas drops players into a surreal version of 1970s San Francisco, mixing platforming, environmental puzzles and reality-bending mechanics into something that already feels a little different from the norm.
And if the words ‘Portal vibes’ immediately spring to mind, you probably won’t be alone.
At A Glance
Game: Yerba Buena
Developer: Mad About Pandas
Publisher: Focus Entertainment
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC
Genre: Puzzle Platformer
Price: £19.99
Welcome To A Broken Gameworld
Yerba Buena puts players in the shoes of Barb, a young woman living as an NPC inside an abandoned video game world known as Bay Angels. Things quickly go sideways when a dangerous glitch begins threatening the city around her, pushing Barb from background character into unlikely hero territory.
Helping her along the way is a strange device called the Oscillator – and this is where things start getting properly weird.
Rather than simply moving objects around, the Oscillator allows players to copy and paste the physical properties of items throughout the world. One moment you might be giving a table the bounce of a trampoline. The next, you’re launching buildings through the air or turning solid walls into something you can simply walk through.
A Puzzle Game With Some Serious Personality
While the gameplay hook is the obvious attention-grabber, Yerba Buena also seems keen to go big on atmosphere and storytelling.
The 1970s San Francisco setting gives the game a distinctive identity, while the whole ‘NPC trapped inside a forgotten gameworld’ premise adds mystery underneath all the platforming and physics puzzles.
There’s also a slightly playful tone – less cold sci-fi puzzler, more colourful glitchy adventure with personality.
And given how heavily puzzle games have borrowed from Portal 2 over the years, that’s probably no bad thing. In fact, we previously spent time explaining why Portal 2 may well be the greatest game ever made, so anything willing to channel even a little of that energy immediately gets our attention.
Can Yerba Buena Become A Puzzle Favourite?
Puzzle-platformers live and die by the strength of their central mechanic, but Yerba Buena certainly seems to have found one capable of carrying an entire adventure. The idea of manipulating physics and movement properties on the fly feels ripe for clever level design, creative solutions and plenty of player experimentation.
We’ll find out soon enough whether Yerba Buena fully delivers on that potential, mostly as we’re well on the review train, but for now, this looks like one of the more intriguing puzzle games to land on Xbox this year. Pick up Yerba buena from the Xbox Store for £19.99. It’s also on the PlayStation Store and Steam.
