Katy and Bob: Way Back Home

To begin with, there is a pretty fun and engaging storyline that develops over the course of the game. Wishing to show his spoiled children that money does not grow on trees, the father of the main characters books for his kids a special tour designed to teach them about money. Without suspecting a trick, the siblings get on boar the ship, which soon brings them to the godforsaken island without a penny in their pockets. So, your task is to help Katy and Bob understand the importance of work in their lives and earn the money to buy a return ticket, serving soft drinks at a local bar. Every few levels you will be shown short cut scenes drawn in a comic book style, allowing you to see firsthand how the main characters’ father’s cunning plan is executed. There is no voice acting, but the cut scenes are so rare that you probably won’t even notice this little omission.

To tell the truth, the game’s gameplay proved to be absolutely typical for its genre, though with several quite pleasing improvements. First, there are two levels of difficulty and a rather handsome skippable tutorial. Second, most of the store upgrades are available right away, excluding the upgrades for items that appear at higher levels and those that might be unlocked one by one, for example, two, three and more fruit bushes. In other words, yet from the very beginning of the game, you will be able to improve the appearance of one or more pieces of furniture, including a bar counter, floor, banisters and tables, enhance the functionality of one of the units directly involved in the production of drinks, for example expand the capacity of Katy’s inventory, buy another tray for Bob, speed up the mixer or purchase one more pomegranate bush. As you see, you have the great power to decide which path to choose, but keep in mind that there’s never enough money to buy all that you need, so even in the simplest mode you will have to arm yourself with patience and think through each step in advance. Taking into account that you buy upgrades from the money earned during the level, a bad start can spoil you the whole game, as each subsequent level will be less and less productive. As a result, in spite of dynamic gameplay, you won’t be able to complete the game without racking your brains on whom to serve first, what to buy and when to make a combo without loosing your profits.

Still, buying upgrades for dollars is not the only way to improve your bar. In later levels, aside from the main goal that boils down to earning a certain amount of money, there is a secondary goal that changes each day. For example, you may be given a task to serve menus to several customers in a row, set off three fireworks, and so on. Of course, when you have a queue with impatient customers, performing such tricks can be fraught with difficulty. It is almost impossible to reach a secondary goal without spoiling the mood of your customers, so you will have to set priorities in advance and manage your time very wisely in order not to lose everything. Believe me it’s definitely worth the effort. The point is that performing additional tasks you can earn gold coins, which are spent on buying magic items in a local antique shop. These so called artifacts affect intangible objects such as speed of movement, mood and so on, so, as you see, they are also quite useful.

Anyway, if you fail to perform an additional task from the first attempt, you will be offered a chance to replay the level. In truth, if you love Dinner Dash-like games as much as I do, you will enjoy every moment of playing Katy and Bob: Way Back Home, no matter how many times you repeat each level. Even if the desire to learn the ending of this tragicomic story is not sufficient incentive to complete the game, most likely, you simply won’t be able to tear yourself away from the screen until you purchase all the possible upgrades and get acquainted with all existing clients. By the way, each kind of clients has its own peculiarities. Old men, for example, have almost infinite patience, divers and teen girls, on the contrary, are quite impatient and irritable, guys with guitars are so annoying that after they leave the positive mood of all remaining customers immediately rises to a maximum, and so on.

Speaking of innovations, if you manage to perform a combo or simply fulfill an order before the mood of your customer gets completely spoiled, you will be given one or several love hearts of different sizes. These hearts are used to launch fireworks, which allows you to excite your customers and make them throw their money on the floor. As well as a vide variety of characters with unique features and clever upgrade system, fireworks give you the brilliant opportunity to develop your own strategy, as you can launch them both when your bar is overcrowded to make more money, and when the patience of your customers is running out in order to stop them from leaving. In addition, there are pretty fun mini-games reminiscent of the recent iPad game under the title Fruit Ninja, where you are to slash juicy fruits flying around your screen. In Katy and Bob: Way Back Home, you simply catch them to make cocktails and earn extra coins. To crown it all, in later levels there is a special area for monkey customers, which makes the game even more amusing.

All in all, with its splendid mini-games, fresh innovations, nice animation, cheerful beach music and quality 3D graphics, Katy and Bob: Way Back Home is definitely worth playing. I was a little bit disappointed by the opening cut scene with deliberately cartoonish characters, but it’s just a drop in the ocean of straightforward fun, so don’t let this shortage mislead you. If you like clicky games and do not mind a challenge, Katy and Bob: Way Back Home is just what you’ve been searching for!