Thanks to Atari for the review code
Title: Bubsy 4D
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $19.99
Release Date: 05/22/2026
Story
You’d think after Paws on Fire, Bubsy would be done for. Doomed to never come back, doomed to continue being a meme. Well, as we can see from this review title and my review of the Collection from a few months ago, he has indeed come back for his third revival. Does this lead to a riveting story of an ancient Bubsy on hard times? He did look a bit like a wackadoo in the last two games after all, so did he end up going on the internet to ramble conspiracies, start some podcast to sell sponsored supplements, or just straight up die?
Surprisingly no, for he is very much alive, pretty old, but much better looking than he was the last time. Here you have Bubsy’s nephews stumbling upon a camera and bullying their uncle yet again, only for their sheep to get attacked by the Woolies and taken away. With no stakes in the game, Bubsy and co just shrug it off and don’t think much of it. A bit later, Bubsy comes to find out that accelerationism is indeed bad, for the sheep have overthrown the woolies, taken power, and now are the Baabots taking Bubsy’s golden fleece into space. After taking out one of the UFOs, Bubsy and co hijack it on a grand tour in space to get the fleece back!
Surprisingly, this one ended up being the Bubsy game to have Bubsy come off as more relatable and not as annoying for annoyingness sake. Yes, he quips, yes, he can repeat jokes and yes, you can adjust the frequency of them to make him mute if you can’t stand his voice. But unlike the last few games where none of his quips were remotely funny, and the plots were all generic ones with not much to them, there’s more character dialogue in this game than one might expect. The voiced scenes are genuinely well acted, with all the voice actors giving top notch performances that don’t sound like they’re phoning it in. For the plot relevant stuff here, you have a fine, if basic story with good voice work, although there are a lot of unvoiced lines during the stages I wish weren’t that way. I wanna hear more of these great performances!
Presentation
Bubsy 4D is yet another in a seemingly rare lineup of games that just works comfortably on Steam Deck without a fuss. Full screen resolution, super good performance, and settings premade for the Deck right from the getgo, with no tinkering needed to get the game to feel right. That’s pretty darn great, and on the deck’s screen the game runs quite well! The environments in Bubsy 4D are decent looking too, with the space theme leading to weird planet designs, like one made out almost entirely out of fleece. Thus, you don’t have much in terms of complicated models or world designs that might tank the framerate, leading my time with 4D to stay relatively smooth. All in all, a great looking game on Deck.
Audio wise, I already mentioned the solid voice direction, thus that applies to the voice acting too. Nothing sounds grating here, and the closest anything in 4D comes to that is whenever Bubsy talks during a level while doing his motions. If you end up replaying the stages a lot and have his chatter frequency up too high, you will hear the same lines over and over again and will go insane. Thankfully that’s a quick fix in the options menu, letting you play the speedrun way without being driven bonkers. Nothing this Bubsy says is anywhere near as obnoxious as the Taco Tuesday “joke” from Woolies Strike Back, at least. I do wish the voice acting here was for every line of dialogue instead of just some, but I’ll take what I can get.
The music is rather catchy too! While there are a couple remixes here, most of the stuff in 4D’S OST is brand new and funky. I didn’t expect to remember more songs from this game than the songs from every game in the Collection, but needless to say this is miles above the eargrating OST of Bubsy 3D, and considering I don’t even remember the OST to Paws on Fire or Woolies Strike Back (with one of them being a rhythmic game for crying out loud), Bubsy 4D nails the audio design all around.
Gameplay
Bubsy 4D is the second 3D Bubsy platformer, after Bubsy 3D. No need to further explain why Bubsy 3D isn’t well liked. But with so much time between entries, it isn’t that much of a hot take to say even a mediocre 3D platformer like FreezeME steamrolls 3D, so even a bad 3D platformer by today’s standards would be easy to rush out for cheap, be better than 3D and thus be easy to call it a day on.
Thankfully, we have a very good engine for 3D platforming, from Slime-San creators Fabraz using their 3D work on Demon Turf as a base for Bubsy 4D, thus letting Bubsy have the best control he’s ever had in any of his games to date. He jumps, runs, pounces, and can even climb up walls, all really satisfying to do. You also have the ability to make him into a fat ball that can roll and gain lots of speed. Needless to say, his movement capabilities are very much up to the task of going through the three worlds of 3D Platforming.
The main focus of each stage is to just go for the golden fleece, placed right at the end of the level ala your goal ring in a 3D Sonic game. Bubsy must use his abilities to get to said end of stage, but the fun part about Bubsy 4D is the variety you have in how you get there as fast as possible. With Bubsy’s pounce and glide you can make some pretty cool jumps, and good use of the ball mechanic can really ramp up your speed once you master the quirks of rolling around. Of course, it wouldn’t be a 3D platformer with some kind of extra stuff to collect besides the main item, and as a result you have tons of purple yarn balls scattered around each stage, often in a way to force you to explore off the beaten path and take some side routes.
Because Bubsy’s so much fun to control, I never really had a problem goofing off to try and find these balls when replaying stages, and the yarn isn’t just for show, as you can use them to trade in for all kinds of costumes for Bubsy, from his Bubsy 3D model, to a weird fox looking one made of yarn. Also hidden within the stages are scrolls, which can be traded in for new techniques you can toggle on or off to make the platforming a bit easier. The ones I found most useful were the scrolls that let you charge up a pounce jump (ala Mario’s long jump), and the one which let you cling onto walls without automatically sliding down, so they aren’t party tricks, and are well worth the hunt for.
Of course, there are also boss fights, albeit not many of them. With only fifteen stages, three of them have a boss at the end, and these fights were OK. The ones I managed to get to and stick with had some pretty cool use of the mechanics, but Bubsy has never ever been that great of a boss fighter, and that tradition continues into 4D. None of them were bad by any means, but I much preferred the platforming and looking around for yarn vs doing the usual “hit enemies and wait for a pattern to play out” routine.
Really, the combat is one of two parts of Bubsy 4D I felt were underbaked. You can pounce on enemies and take them out that way pretty well, but I cannot begin to count how many times I stupidly tried jumping at an enemy only to miss and hit them for damage, forgetting that pouncing was the more reliable attack method. Not that Bubsy needed a melee attack or anything, but the usual stages are pretty light on combat to the point you’ll wonder why you even have grunt enemies to fight. At least I can say the bosses, while giving me a mild challenge, at least felt more consistent than bumping into the occasional enemy; you’ll definitely have more of a challenge from the platforming compared to when you have to pounce on enemies.
The other part that was underbaked, which might sound nuts after how much I praised Bubsy’s controls and the fun of exploration, was the level designs themselves. Yes, the stages are fun to play and a blast to keep replaying for a faster time and nabbing all the collectibles, but in terms of their theming or cohesion, Bubsy 4D realy doesn’t have much of it. Each world is themed after a different way the Baabots took it over and screwed everything up, but when it comes to the individual stages the best I can describe them is “Random stuff to jump or climb on”, reminding me of Mario Sunshine’s weird limbo floating block stages more than anything else.
Thankfully they’re not nearly as annoying, but when I can only remember a few stages by name despite how much I replayed several of them, and how random a lot of them felt, I really wish the themes were more distinct on a per level basis vs a per world basis. I can remember what each world had as a gimmick, but not exactly each stage! The solid platforming really does save these stages from being otherwise nonsensical, but considering one of the game’s ultimate challenges is beating this entire thing with nine hit points in total, the wacky level makeup can get rather annoying if you aim to challenge yourself that way. This ain’t no Mario 64 when it comes to these stages (not) feeling like a living, breathing world.
Conclusion
I don’t know if I like that with this game reviewed, I now have reviews of the entire Bubsy franchise on SFG. Luckily it’s easy to say this is the best one by far, even if I had a soft spot as a defender for Woolies Strike Back over the years. It might be short, maybe even too short, and I wish the ball mode was a lot easier to control, but the general platforming is pure bliss, and makes me super eager to see what wacky things Speedrunners will come up with in order to break this game into pieces.
Speaking of speedrunning, it truly seems like Bubsy 4D is largely geared toward that nature vs providing a rather long, indepth experience. It won’t take you long at all to beat the game, and if you put in a little more effort you can 100% it with the scroll skills without much trouble. It comes from getting the speedrun times that the true challenge of Bubsy 4D comes into play, but even that likely won’t take too much time if you master the controls. 9 Lives Mode is the real challenge here, and by far the mode I expect completionists will spend the most time on trying to surpass, so if you’re one who likes to master platforming mechanics, this game is more replayable than one might think!
I just wish the levels were a little more grounded than what they were, but by and large with controls this good, it’s pretty tough to say that I didn’t have a good time here, and I am more than eager to see if Fabraz brings more life into the world of Bubsy in the future. This is a fantastic starting point, but I do wish it had been just a bit more of a well designed experience. Definitely going to double dip on this one and go for the full 100%, though, which at least says something about how damn good Bubsy feels to control even if it’s in absolute nonsense land!
I give Bubsy 4D a 7 out of 10.