Yesterday evening I was finally able to try Bizarre Barber, a VR videogame that always got me curious from the gameplay videos. Courtesy of Maria of Synesthetic Echo, I have spent some time with this crazy game, and now I’m here telling you my impressions!
Gameplay
As you can see from the above trailer, Bizarre Barber is not the classical VR game. And this is something I loved from it.
The plot is simple: after the apocalypse, you are the only barber left, and so it’s you who has to cut the radioactive hair of all the monsters in town. If you fail in your task, you get replaced by a robot. But the monsters, the birds, and all the other creatures you have to cope with are always in a hurry, so they won’t sit down on your chair waiting for you to cut their hair, but they will run frantically in their daily lives and you will have to cut their hair on the fly while they are on the metro.
That is, some of the monsters will be seated on the metro wagon, and will just put their head out of the window waiting for you to give them a new hairstyle. Some will be birds to which you have to cut the tail. Some others will be… well, I have no idea, weird moving creatures 🙂 But all of them will be running towards you. At the end of some levels, there will also be a bonus creature to which you have to cut the most colored hair possible in the time given.
This seems easy, but it is not. The first level is slow and with mostly still creatures, but the more you go on, the more the trains will be fast, and the monsters’ heads will move more. Furthermore, there will be various maluses (like some bombs that make your scissors very tiny) or modifiers (like one that separates the blades of your scissors so that you can cut two monsters at the same time), that will make the game feel variated over time. Cutting hair is satisfying due to the great physics sensations that they give you. And it is also good that it is challenging because when the heads become many, you have to move fast to cut them all their hair. This game is very fun to be played.
The real problem is that you have to cut the hair without harming the monsters, that is without touching their head with the scissors. And this is where the game becomes frustrating: sometimes the monsters move too much and it is almost impossible not touching them, especially if they move themselves towards the scissors. Other times, the system detects that you have touched their head while it is actually not true.
If you hurt too many monsters of if you miss too many of them, the level is considered lost and you have to start it again from scratch. There is an efficiency percentage that increases the more you do well and decreases the more you do bad, and if it reaches 0% then it is game over. Considering that in some parts of the levels the space is so crowded that it is almost impossible not touching the head of the monsters, the game can become really frustrating at times.
If you instead manage to finish a level, you will see a weight scale weighing the hair that you have cut, and awarding you with 1 to 3 stars. The more you play, the more you collect money with your job, so you can have upgrades and unlock new levels. Anyway, due to the difficulties described above, getting 3 stars is almost impossible after the first levels. And that’s another bad thing.
While every level is very short (like 2-3 minutes), the overall gameplay time is around 2 hours. While the game can be sometimes frustrating, it is very original, and it is also fun to show to friends and relatives. Since the game requires you to move the big scissors that you have in your hands all the time, playing it can also be quite tiresome. This can be a pro if you like games that make you stay fit, or a con if you just want to relax. After 20 minutes in the game, I was already sweating, just to give you the idea of how tiring it is.
I also think that the game would be better with some more modifiers. The continuous cutting motion may be dull to repeat all the time for two hours, and every time there is a modifier in the game, it feels like a breath of fresh air. Probably there should be more moments where you don’t need to continuously cut stuff in the same way during the game.
Do you want to see some minutes of original gameplay? Well, you just have to ask! This is a video shot by me of the first levels of Bizarre Barber:
Graphics
A bit like has happened with Banana For Scale, graphics, together with originality of the idea, is what I liked the most of this game. All the creatures look pretty cute or pretty fun and also the hair physics is nice. The environments change in the various levels, and all look a bit scary but mostly funny. The cartoonish colored style of the game is a pleasure for the eyes. The whole colored weirdness that you see is lovely inside the headset.
I also loved the metro-style of the game: since you work in the metro, every level represent a different metro station of the city, and you see them presented with you as usually you see the stations of a line of the metro in the map of the public transport of a city.
Kudos for who designed the graphics of this game, it is really nice, and it is also perfect for the absurd idea behind the game of you being a barber for busy monsters.
Sound
I’m not a sound expert at all, but the audio of the game was very good to me. Both the soundtracks and the audio effects really suited the game. It is also an added fun that the monsters give comments to your haircut, for instance saying “Thank you” if you did well your job or “Ahi, be careful” when you hurt them with your scissors.
Control scheme
You play the whole game without controller buttons. You have in your hands a gigantic scissor, and every hand controls one of its rings. Managing this scissor is not only tiresome but sometimes it is frustrating because moving it precisely is quite hard. Sometimes some modifier splits your scissor in two, and so you operate every blade independently: I found myself more comfortable with this mode.
Also the menu is dead simple and you operate with it without having to press any key of your controllers, but by just moving big handles that you have in front of you.
My big piece of advice to you is playing the game in a big free space: while you should theoretically just being fixed in one spot, some monsters with weird hair poses and many movements are better managed if you can move freely in some meters of playground.
Comfort
This game is suitable to all stomaches. You basically play it by standing in one point, and maybe moving a bit with room-scale. There’s no way you can feel nauseous with it. Also, the menu offers options to modify how you handle the big scissor and if you want to play the game standing or seated. So, on the comfort side, it is a great game.
Final impressions
Bizarre Barber is a good VR game. It has an original setting and original gameplay, a bit ruined by the fact that the game may be repetitive, frustrating and tiresome (but this last point may be a pro for some). The graphics are excellent and funny and this game is awesome to shoot videos for the web.
It is a game for everyone, and in the end, I had some fun playing with it, also making some members of my family give it a try. If you are interested in it, you can buy it on Steam for 10€. Have fun cutting that hair!
(Header image by Synesthetic Echo)