After experimenting with the narrative-heavy format of Hitchhiker, German developer Mad About Pandas takes a more gameplay-focused approach with Yerba Buena, though storytelling still remains central to the experience. Set in a stylized version of 1970s San Francisco, the game follows Barb, a young woman trying to find her place in the city after recently arriving there. Her ordinary life is quickly disrupted when her friend Russell is abducted by a biker named Bear, who accidentally drops a strange device called the Oscillator during the chase. From there, Yerba Buena spirals into increasingly surreal territory, gradually revealing that Barb is merely an NPC inside a deteriorating videogame world plagued by glitches, corrupted systems and conflicting layers of reality. It’s an unusual setup that embraces its own absurdity, but the way the mystery steadily unfolds keeps the story engaging throughout its ten-hour runtime.
The narrative proves to be one of the game’s strongest aspects because it continuously introduces new ideas beyond the initial “game within a game” premise. Bear himself is more interesting than he first appears, especially once it becomes clear that he’s effectively controlled by an aggressive game tester limited to loud and destructive dialogue choices. Yerba Buena uses these meta elements to explore themes surrounding identity, agency and manipulation without becoming overly self-serious, and the surreal tone works particularly well against the backdrop of the 1970s setting. The era gives the story additional personality through its protest culture, industrial expansion and psychedelic influences, helping the strange events feel oddly believable within the game’s own logic. At the same time, some emotional moments don’t hit quite as hard as intended because several supporting characters lack depth outside their role in moving the plot forward.
Gameplay revolves entirely around the Oscillator, and this mechanic is where Yerba Buena feels genuinely inventive. Barb can copy physical properties or movement patterns from ordinary objects and apply them to glitched objects elsewhere in the environment. Cars can transfer momentum to buildings, trampolines can lend their bounce to flat surfaces, and later abilities introduce even stranger possibilities involving steam and altered physics. The gradual introduction of new mechanics keeps the early and middle portions of the game consistently fresh, especially because puzzles rarely rely on a single straightforward solution. There’s a satisfying experimental quality to the design, encouraging players to toy around with systems until the right combination clicks into place.
Unfortunately, the game struggles with clarity and consistency once the puzzles become more demanding. Several later sections rely heavily on trial-and-error problem solving because the game doesn’t always communicate its rules clearly enough. Some solutions feel unintuitive unless players accidentally stumble into the correct interaction, while other sequences become frustrating simply because the targeting system lacks precision. Applying effects with the Oscillator can be awkward during more complex puzzles, especially when rapid adjustments are required. The reset system also becomes an issue over time, since players can only completely revert altered objects rather than selectively undoing individual changes. Combined with platforming sections that feel fairly basic mechanically, this creates moments where the challenge stems less from clever puzzle design and more from repeating failed attempts until the game finally cooperates.
The pacing suffers as a result. New mechanics initially feel exciting, but Yerba Buena sometimes overuses them immediately after introduction, causing sections to drag on longer than necessary. Some levels become repetitive because they repeatedly ask players to perform the same actions across larger environments, often forcing lengthy backtracking whenever mistakes are made. Unskippable cutscenes further contribute to the frustration during retry-heavy sequences, particularly when revisiting sections after failure. Even so, the core concept remains strong enough that the game rarely becomes completely tedious, and there are still several standout puzzles that successfully combine experimentation, traversal and environmental storytelling in satisfying ways.
Visually, Yerba Buena leaves a strong impression thanks to its colorful art direction and stylized depiction of San Francisco. The slightly exaggerated, non-realistic visuals suit the premise well because the world constantly feels artificial in subtle ways, reinforcing the idea that Barb exists inside a constructed reality. Warm colors dominate the city streets and public spaces, while later areas shift toward colder palettes and more unsettling imagery as the story grows darker. The glitch effects themselves are especially effective, adding visual instability without overwhelming the player. Character animation can occasionally appear stiff, and some technical issues interrupt the experience from time to time, but the overall presentation remains distinctive enough to compensate for many of those rough edges.
The audio presentation is solid overall, even if it misses opportunities to lean more heavily into its 1970s setting. Voice acting generally sells the game’s eccentric cast and surreal tone, though a few performances sound somewhat uneven during quieter scenes. The soundtrack supports the atmosphere effectively, but it rarely captures the era-specific energy players might expect from a game so rooted in ‘70s counterculture aesthetics. Still, the ambient sound design and subtle audio distortions tied to the glitches help maintain a constant sense of instability beneath the game’s more colorful exterior.
Yerba Buena ultimately feels like a game driven more by creativity and ambition than polish. Mad About Pandas has built a fascinating foundation around the Oscillator mechanic and layered it with a surprisingly compelling meta-narrative that consistently pushes players to uncover what lies beneath the surface of its strange world. Yet the execution doesn’t always support those ideas as smoothly as it should, with repetitive stretches, awkward platforming and imprecise controls occasionally undermining the experience. Even so, players willing to tolerate some frustration in exchange for originality will find a puzzle-platformer that dares to experiment in ways few modern games attempt, and that alone makes Yerba Buena difficult to dismiss.
Score: 7.1/10