Apple Arcade: Down in Bermuda is one of those Activity Bear games
You switch.
This week we're looking at some of the gems of Apple Arcade. Next stop, a dreamy puzzler.
I love Down in Bermuda as much for what it made me realise as for what it actually is. It's one of those games where you prod and poke your way through puzzles, pressing this button, sliding that switch, turning this dial. It made me realise: oh man, these games are probably a thing now. This is probably a sort of sub-species genre.
I think we should call these games Activity Bear games, after the big plastic bear that had all those dials and doodads and whatnots for entertaining very young children. Whatever name works, Down in Bermuda is lovely. A pilot crashlands on an island and, years later, the player turns up to help them get home. You do all this by exploring the environment, prodding, poking, sliding...
After a bus ride of this, I can tell you I'm up for more. The game's environments are lovely things, chunky but detailed dioramas ripe for change. Flick a switch and a temple might rise out of the grass somewhere. Ease open an underwater dome and a sea monster might attack.
These puzzles don't yield to logic so much as they yield to that fake kind of cause-and-effect system that's baked into every Indiana Jones film and every Tomb Raider game. Switches and buttons lead to deep, gratey rumblings, which lead to castle walls sliding back, which lead to the discovery of treasure. More of this please!