As you might guess from the title of the latest game, Boulder Dash has been around for quite a while. Originally released in 1984 for the Atari 8-bit computer, Boulder Dash went on to be into 22 different versions and updates for multiple consoles ranging from NES to smart phones. It’s a series that’s been around the block, and mostly because it’s incredibly fun!
The most recent version of the venerated Boulder Dash franchise is the Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary Edition, released by BBG Entertainment and finally ported to the Switch after an initial release back in 2016 for PCs and smart phones, explaining why it’s the 30th Anniversary Edition, even though the game is almost 36 years old. This new entry modernizes the gameplay of Boulder Dash with new input from its original creators, but changes things up so much that you can only see hints of the original game in the new one.
Everything is new and shiny in Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary, with slick 3D characters and backgrounds to replace the old 8-bit style. Rockford, the main character, has been given a slick new voxel-style design, along with 9 other playable characters, and there are a variety of new worlds to choose from, once you manage to unlock them. Levels are themed based on the worlds they take place in, and as you play, you earn stars to unlock new worlds. The better you do gathering gems in levels, the faster you’ll unlock more of the game, so just getting through definitely won’t cut it in Boulder Dash!
Unfortunately, there are a lot of negatives here as well. Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary is designed much like a free-to-play phone game, likely because that’s what it is. This carries over onto the Switch with almost no changes and feels poorly designed for a console system. Everything in the game is unlockable, but the amount of time and effort required to do so is almost ludicrous. Some characters, for example are only unlockable if you manage to earn as many as 300 random items that appear through levels, a feat that could require hundreds of hours. The same goes for using gold bars to unlock things early. After hours of play you might have as many as 100 gold bars, but to unlock characters or levels could use all of them at once. Some characters require as many as 400 gold bars to unlock, and can unlock early for 50 gold bars.
Basically everything that’s available in the phone game is available here, only stuck behind a pay wall without microtransactions. Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary was designed with the idea that you could buy gold bars with real money to unlock new levels and characters. Instead of revamping that design, BBG and First Star Software left the entire paywall mechanic intact but eliminated the ability to buy gold bars, thereby unbalancing the game heavily. You’re now forced to grind through increasingly difficult levels over and over again to maximize the number of stars you can get from each. At 60 stars per world if you manage to somehow get all three possible stars from all 20 levels in each world, it’s going to take a long time to unlock all the worlds. Just getting through the levels is tough enough, and by the third or fourth world, you’ll find that some levels are so hard that you definitely won’t want to try them over and over.
Physics are not your friend here either. Many levels are designed so that Rockford has to take a daring plunge past a precarious stack of boulders just to get to the next part of the stage, and gems are placed along the way to tempt you. Slow down and you die. Miss the gems and you won’t get that third star to unlock more of the game. It’s a Catch-22 that leaves players floundering through levels and dying over and over again just to gain a tiny progression, basically destroying the fun factor of the game. The original Boulder Dash was hard, unfair, and challenging. In 1984, that was almost endearing. Today, that same style smacks of lazy level design and unbalanced gameplay. Sure, you’ll still be just as frustrated as the original, but you shouldn’t be. And starting over and over to get an extra couple gems simply sucks.
There are a few new things in Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary that warrant notice however. The addition of dynamite, freeze power-ups, bonuses, and other items add some interesting flavor to an otherwise lackluster game. Dynamite is especially fun, blasting through otherwise impenetrable sections of the game. Sadly, this is also poorly implemented. Levels where dynamite is required to access certain gems are clearly marked with dynamite signs. Unfortunately, just like everything else, dynamite is a commodity you could use gold bars to buy in the mobile version of the game, and is scarce and shows up randomly in the Switch version. This means you’ll be playing through a level unable to get the final star unless you happen to randomly come across a random treasure chest that has random contents and happens to spit out more dynamite. Good luck with that.
All items are the same in Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary, with random drop rates and frustrating scarcity. This includes the items required to unlock playable characters. Just getting five Heartstones to unlock Crystal took literally 2+ hours. Unlocking 8-bit Rockford requires 250 items, which could potentially take as long as 500+ hours. For what should be a clever puzzle game, Boulder Dash quickly turns into an exercise in frustration and continually repeated levels that feels much like grinding in a bad RPG.
By comparison, Boulder Dash XL for the 3DS was significantly more fun and better balanced than this newer version. It also included the original 1984 Boulder Dash game as a bonus, something else that is ridiculously lacking here. It’s a shame that the designers of Boulder Dask 30th Anniversary didn’t take some cues from the recently released and incredibly well-designed Lode Runner Legacy (which we reviewed here!). Legacy showed that a classic 80s game can be fully redesigned and still hold its fun factor. Like Boulder Dash XL, Lode Runner Legacy included the full original game as a bonus and built carefully upon the original mechanics to create a fun experience. That’s simply not the case here.
Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary is a painful attempt to port an obviously phone-centric game to a home console cheaply for a quick buck. The $15 price tag is meant to compensate for the loss of micro-transaction credit that BBG would expect you to buy over the course of gameplay on the free-to-play phone format, but here, it just means that the game is overpriced. You will likely get bored of Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary long before you play your money’s worth out of it. Do yourself a favor and avoid this one. As much as it looks like it would be a great time and a fun game to go back to, it definitely isn’t.
This review was based on a digital copy of Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and is equally playable in both. Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary is also available for Steam, iOS, Android, PS4, XBox One, and Mac, so you can hate yourself on your console of choice. The original Boulder Dash is, of course, awesome, as are other version of the game, so definitely don’t hate the franchise over this release!
You cam see the game website at https://boulder-dash.com/