It’s not everyday you get your hands on a new Gameboy game, but D*Fuzed is just that. From Incube8 Games, your journey with your new bomb defusing buddy, Deef, begins as you control him and help rescue his friends while a big bad boss tries to drop bombs on you.
D*Fuzed plays a lot like a reverse Bomberman in the sense that instead of running away from the bombs you need to get to them to defuse them to restore your battery so that you can keep going on your adventure.
The bombs themselves all have separate timers creating a dynamic minefield that you need to navigate to try and defuse. All while simultaneously not being blown up by them. This creates a great sense of tension as you need to think of the most effective path to keep your battery charged and Deef alive.
As you progress through the levels various different obstacles will start to be added into your journey to hinder your journey, but with some clever thinking and planning you can make short work of them and get on towards saving your friends. Everything from rocks and pitfalls to lasers will try to hinder you on your journey.
One interesting part of D*Fuzed is that the cutscenes are fully voiced and, with such restrictive hardware, this is mighty impressive. The artwork on display throughout the cutscenes and the backgrounds of each level are very cool and instantly brought me back to playing on my Gameboy as a kid.
There are two main modes: The story mode that lets you journey through the world saving your friends and then there’s the Danger Room which is essentially quick fire rounds of the same sort of gameplay as you’d expect in story-mode but without any story elements to it — so you can play and defuse to your heart’s content.
The music is great, every tune has this mechanical feel to them while still being able to create enough of a difference between each level to make it feel distinct.
I received a physical copy of D*Fuzed which includes the game cartridge, the manual featuring some helpful tips, information and artwork as well as a nice sheet of stickers in a very nice little box.
Personally I don’t think anything beats having the physical version of these sorts of games but D*Fuzed is also available to purchase directly from the Incube8 Games website with its digital version as well as a little case for your Gameboy Game.
