Bouncer Story is interesting in one very unique way, and that is that it had presented itself as something that it wasn’t.  It would be easy to be fooled into thinking that Bouncer Story is an indie side scrolling brawler, as it was presented to this review crew when it was first put out, but instead it is more of a text adventure/visual novel game.  It might be easy to mistake any of the choices that are given to have an impact on the story, but not many of them seem to. So is there anything redeeming about the title?

The answer is not really. 

Bouncer Story would be interesting 10+ years ago when GameMaker was emerging and people were giving away these types of titles for free or extremely, extremely low cost of entry — possible only the suggestion of a donate button hidden in a menu.   Now the game is 8 dollars and will sit in obscurity instead of being a pleasant calling card for those that worked on it. 

The problems with the game, aside from indie based jank, is that nothing is done well.  The graphics aren’t great, the setting is drab, there are no characters, the plot is pointless, and the biggest sin of all is that it fails as either a visual novel or a choose your own adventure.  When the writing falls apart, and the characters (or entire lack thereof), make the player just lose all interest there is nothing to keep anyone interested and the game is put down.  With Bouncer Story that happens in the first 30 seconds when the owner of the first bar asks the player to a game, and neither choice matters.  The entire game feels like this.

Normally these kind of games can be recommended to a “it is so bad it is good,” or “this could be improved, by doing this,” but there are points that there is so little effort in this game it is sad.  Dialog choices that just seem like saying one thing was so unexpected that the title simply expected the player to pick the other, so it just didn’t have a response for anything else.  Avoid Bouncer Story.  It isn’t worth the space on your drive.