A Bonnie Odyssey: Using circular logic in a sci-fi puzzle adventure

I played Botany Manor recently, and it got me thinking about genre. Botany Manor is almost certainly a puzzle game, and the gameplay design is oriented around it. But the story and environment that surround it and act as the connective tissue between the brainteasers take on a life of their own. These sort of games carve out their own journeys where puzzle mechanics complement a broader experience, and A Bonnie Odyssey confidently asserts itself as one of them.

A Bonnie Odyssey is the tale of the protagonist, Zoe, who is journeying to the Scottish Isles and the site of Zimmerman HQ. Robert Zimmerman, her father, created a techno-utopian hub in the twenty-second century to pioneer a space exploration program. However, something went horribly wrong, and now the entire facility is deserted. Zoe has returned to find out exactly what happened.

The demo establishes the narrative threads of Zoe's story and provides the player with an opportunity to explore the setting of Zimmerman HQ. It's an awfully pretty synthesis of purist sci-fi design and natural decay, with much of the building reclaimed by overgrown flora. Players are guided through the facility's main building: the Welcome Centre, a showroom of Zimmerman's faded achievements.

A Bonnie Odyssey is a puzzle game first and foremost, though, with the environment providing the context for how the puzzles interact, much like in The Witness. The Centre is powered by a system of consoles that feature rotating puzzles, and in order to progress through the building and activate doors and lifts, the player will have to restore power by figuring out how to solve their puzzles.

Every puzzle in A Bonnie Odyssey is based on activating a terminal. To do so, players align a series of elements in concentric circles to guide the line that emits from one or more nodes to one or more goals. By rotating the barriers in some circles, the lines can match up and activate the terminal. This sounds simple, but as more elements are added to the game, the puzzles ramp up in relative difficulty.

Several variations work their way into the gameplay as the demo progresses. First, there's splitters, that direct one line into two. Some symbols emerge with crosses, which can't be in the way of a line for it to activate. Then there's splitting lines that must pass through a node of a corresponding color before reaching each of their own points. It quickly becomes clear a lot of mechanics start to work in concert.

A more traditional puzzle game would struggle to not feel a little empty taking this approach, but A Bonnie Odyssey is lovingly voice-acted and promises a cast of sixteen characters, many of them being robots left behind after whatever incident took place. The player gets to meet one of them, JU-N0, before the demo wraps up. The robots have been offline and haven't noticed twenty years have passed, amusingly prompting them to treat Zoe as if she were still a child. The life that the story gives to this game transcends the puzzles - in themselves well-designed - and encourages exploration in a way that makes the environment feel more interesting.

Creating A Bonnie Odyssey is no small feat, and the game is the product of a large development team named Astrodreamer Studio, a Scottish studio formed in 2021 from alumni of Albertay University Dundee. Development of A Bonnie Odyssey involved many hands on deck, including several leads: artist Tabbie Marshall, designer and programmer Jake Allan, composer Sam Langan, producer Jordan Hastings and writer Raydun Bolk. The game received some early recognition with nominations at the Scottish Games Awards in 2022.

A demo of the game was available on Steam in June, with the full game awaiting a release date. In a GamerHub interview with producer Blair Watson in January, the game is tracking for release sometime this year.

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