“We Have Portal at Home”

Apparently the settlement that would become the city of San Francisco was once called Yerba Buena, which is where this quirky physics platformer got its name.

Set in an alternate reality 1970’s version of the City by the Bay, my 90-minute demo had me rushing to rescue a friend, discovering the first seeds of a government conspiracy, and scratching my head over a lot of the writing decisions.

On the plus side, the art in Yerba Buena is quite charming.

It reminds me a bit of some of Telltale's older games, like it was torn out of the pages of a graphic novel.

The characters are richly designed with clothing and hairstyles that ground everything in the ‘70s.

The colorful streets capture an almost mythological ideal of SF, a city I lived in for years and still feel very fondly about.

And the jaunty soundtrack is fun, too.

The writing doesn't exactly complete the illusion, though.

The main character is Barb, an out-of-work Midwest transplant who’s likeable enough.

But nothing in Yerba Buena's plot seems to flow naturally from what came before it.

There are simply fixed moments it wants to get to and it will make any excuse to jump from where we are to where it wants to be, even if it requires bizarre leaps of logic or characters coming to really weird conclusions.

The whole tension of the first section hinges on the fact that the SFPD have decided the life of one of Barb's friends who was taken hostage by bikers isn't important, and they're going to storm the building to get the perp even if it means sacrificing a civilian.

The Oscillator is a technomagical device that allows you, at first, to copy the movement of one object and apply it to another.
In essence, Yerba Buena seems like it kind of wants to be Portal.

The Oscillator is a technomagical device that allows you, at first, to copy the movement of one object and apply it to another.

There are some genuinely cool applications for this.

You can copy a speeding car and then apply it to an entire apartment, causing it to fly across the street with you in it and let you access the rooftops the next block over.

Later, it gains the ability to "copy" any vapor and then apply that property to a solid object to allow you or other objects to pass through it.

Its endearing visual style and relatable main character weren't quite enough to get me excited to play more Yerba Buena given the confusing plot and dismal quality of the writing.

The puzzle possibilities of The Oscillator might, though.

Especially if we haven't seen all of the tricks it can do yet.

You'll be able to see it for yourself on May 26 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

Leana Hafer is a contributing freelancer for IGN with a specialty in RPGs, strategy, horror, and survival games.

You can also find her work on sites like PC Gamer and PCGamesN.