The toy of the modern age! Endless fun for all ages! Pick an egg, and you now have your very own Bubby! Feed it, play with it, and watch it grow! The possibilities with your Bubby are endless!
But be careful, sometimes, things might be lurking in the shadows.
But be careful, sometimes, things might be lurking in the shadows.
Bubbaruka! is an Explorer Horror and Digital Horror game made in RPG Maker and inspired by Virtual Pet simulators like Tamagotchi, created by SuperNova Studios (the makers of The Party Collection), with Game Boy-like graphics and aesthetic.
In-Universe, the titular game, made by the California-based, Japanese-American company Kodemu Studios, was mysteriously and abruptly cancelled, and the company itself went out of business. However, your friend John managed to find a super cheap laptop on eBay with a copy of the game, which he decides to email to you.
The game revolves around taking care of the titular Bubbaruka. The game has three- Tomo, a little blob with two antennas; Miboo, a head with two stick-like legs; and Flou, a small humanoid sunflower. You start off with only Tomo available, and can pet it, buy it food at the market to feed, and play a minigame with it.
However, the pets are not the only thing in the game. There are also three predators, NPCs that will chase your pet down. And hidden within the game are all sorts of secrets, including the truth behind the mysterious disappearances of the developers... and something that may have been behind it. Can you discover the truth? Or will you fall prey to the same thing that befell them?
In December of 2021, a post-game DLC was released taking place after the True Ending. Here, you play as one of the three Bubbys cleaning up the game world and restoring it to what it once was. You begin in Bubbyville (one of the last areas in the main game) and must go through the three levels again, completing various tasks like cleaning up graffiti and killing monsters. But beware, for the entity that haunts the game may not be so gone after all...
This game contains examples of:
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: In the level where the final boss lies, you play not as any of the three Bubbies, but are given control of Arti as you walk through.
- Apocalyptic Log: Several notes left behind in the office building detail the chaos that resulted in the deaths of almost every employee.
- Auto-Save: Perhaps the only RPG Maker game that, rather than let you manually save, automatically saves after you enter a new section, complete a puzzle, or such. This can potentially lead to some secret items needed for the True End becoming Permanently Missable Content if you did not get them beforehand.
- Beast in the Maze: Several segments involve monsters stalking you throughout strange maze-like halls.
- Big Bad: The Creature is the entity controlling the predators that stalk the titular Bubbaruka pets, and the one behind the mysterious disappearance of the game developers.
- Bowdlerise: The In-Universe game originally had a hospital area, three predators that would stalk the titular Virtual Pets, and a skull-and-crossbones symbol for when your Bubby is sick. But Director Akarai felt this would be too scary for kids, and so Dummied Out the hospital and predators while replacing the skull symbol with a more sanitized frowny face with x-es over their eyes.
- Brown Note: The face of The Creature- seeing it will instantly Infect the person, and allow Creature to drive them to madness. A picture of his face found its way to the studio, and is what caused everyone to go insane and die.
- Creepy Cave: After escaping the woods in Flou's area, the next segment is inside of a dark cave stalked by a mutant bat.
- Creepy Changing Painting: Several hanging paintings and photos will change while being observed.
- Darkness Equals Death: Both Arti and another unseen creature lurk only in the dark, the latter appearing after spending an extended period of time in the darkness.
- Deadly Doctor: Notes in the hospital imply that a doctor killed a patient by scooping out parts of their brain while under the influence of the main antagonist.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Dying to a predator only really sends you back to the beginning of whatever sub-area you were in. In the post-game, dying to an enemy gets you a Game Over screen, but you can go back to Bubbyville and pick up where you left off- whatever you did in the area you were in is saved, and even the enemies are still damaged if you hit them.
- Disguised Horror Story: The game, on the surface, is a Tamagotchi-style pet raising simulator where you pet, feed, and play with adorable creatures. For your first pet, you can play a skiing minigame where you collect coins in a snow world. If you collect 10, a side path opens to a cabin... which turns out to be a dark building where your pet's eerie footsteps can be heard. The game glitches and you are promptly booted out, but you can go back in to the house, which is actually a Haunted House. From then on, the game becomes an Explorer Horror where you navigate various haunted areas, avoid the spirits haunting the game, and slowly piece together the mysterious disappearances of the game's developers through notes they left.
- Dummied Out: The In-Universe game has had quite a bit of content scrapped, either to make the game fit on a keychain as planner or just because director Akarai disliked it. In particular, Arti and Warn were scrapped, and Masaki deeply resented Akarai for scrapping the former.
- Eldritch Abomination: Creature's face is incomprehensible to the human mind, and the act of viewing it grants him access to your mind.
- The End of the World as We Know It: The goal of the Big Bad is indicated to be bringing this about. If the image of Creature's face is shared on a mass scale, such as through the titular game Bubbaruka, it could bring about the apocalypse as all humanity will become infected by Creature- which is presumably what he wants.
- Escape Sequence: Several of these are scattered throughout the game, most specifically at the end of each zone inside of Flou's segment of the game.
- Extremely Dusty Home: Almost every indoor area is littered with patches of dust and dirt.
- Eye Scream: One closet Jump Scare shows an eye being stabbed by a needle.
- Fate Worse than Death: Creature can control how you see reality, which lets him berate you with horrific images and sensations with no end.
- Flies Equals Evil: Flies swarm your bubby while they are infected by Warn.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Creature's main goal in the game is to infect you, the player, with his influence by showing his face to you. In all endings, he fails to conjure his true face before he is interrupted.
- Giant Spider: The warn infected snowman, Nubby, grows spider legs and resembles a large arachnid.
- Golden Ending: In order to get the true ending, you have to find the hidden keys and unlock the vaults in all three areas, then use new items you've gotten in the old areas to get all the secret items, and use the floppy disc on the debug console to delete the Creature's face. Doing all this allows you to kill Creature for good and save the characters of the game.
- Haunted House: The first level, Bubby Ski Time, mainly consists of a massive house, haunted by the first predator Mow-Mow (a cat-like square).
- Haunted Technology: The titular game seems to be inhabited by supernatural entities that case down the player characters and try to kill them. Creature, a supernatural entity, inhabits the game and corrupts it with his presence.
- Homage: The creator, on the official Discord, explained that the three predator battles are all based on different horror titles:
- The Mow-Mow battle, where you must navigate a maze and collect a certain amount of items to win, is a mock-up of Slender.
- The Arti battle, which has you switching between navigating an arcade game and scaring off Arti when he appears, is based on the gameplay of stationary horror games like the Five Nights at Freddy's games, specifically Five Nights at Freddy's 2.
- The Warn battle, which has you wandering through a house and hiding from the entity while solving puzzles, is based off of Clock Tower and Haunting Ground.
- Humanoid Abomination: Onaga, the final boss of the game, is a twisted humanoid monstrosity of teeth and spider legs.
- Inescapable Horror: In the bad ending of the game, Creature says he will continue to live on through those who have seen his face. In order for Creature to be completely defeated, all people infected by him must be killed, and all media containing his face must be destroyed, which is nearly impossible given the spread out locations that the remaining survivors of Creature might be.
- Interface Screw: The True Final Boss has an attack where he will blacken the screen with fog, making it hard to see while he unleashes his next attack.
- Mind Rape: Creature has been shown to be capable of this, specifically in the case of Nanako. From what is present in the notes, it is implied that she is constantly plagued by horrible images and sensations that have left her insane and institutionalized.
- The Most Dangerous Video Game: In-universe, Bubbaruka is a video game that contains a malevolent entity who wants to spread itself through whoever plays it.
- Multiple Endings: Two, depending on what you do:
- Bad End: If you play the game as normal without unlocking the vaults and finding the hidden disks, then after beating the final boss, Creature will show up and congratulate you for getting rid of Onaga before attempting to show you his true face… only to be stopped by Tomo, who sends you a file and urges you to restart the game, deleting your save, and try again.
- True End: Unlocked by unlocking both vaults, getting and using the hidden discs, and using the Floppy Disc on the computer in the last floor. This time, when Tomo shows up, he simply tells you to run, after which Creature starts chasing you. The three Bubbies come Back from the Dead and attack creature, but he revives himself and tries to show you his face… but the file containing it was in the Floppy Disc you deleted. Creature undergoes a Villainous Breakdown and tries to chase you down again, but the trapped soul gives you a knife, and you use it to finally kill him for good.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The true face of Creature is built up as being a Brown Note that drives anyone who sees it into insanity. Despite all the build-up, we never actually get to see it- which makes it far scarier than any visible face.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: These happen a lot. Usually the glitches overtake the screen for a brief bit.
- Permanently Missable Content: The True End, which requires you to get all the Vault Keys and use them to unlock the vaults, and the hidden discs to enter new floors on the first level. If you go down the hole into an area's boss section without having collected everything, then the game will Auto-Save, locking you out of the True End and forcing you to either go through the game and get the Bad End or delete your save and start over.
- Police Are Useless: The police fail to follow up on the investigation into Onaga for the death of his son, which may have uncovered his role in his son's death and prevented the events of the game from happening. This is likely due to the fact that Kodemu, the company who made Bubbaruka that Onaga works for, is the largest donator to the police department.
- Post-Final Level: Has one for both the main game and post-game:
- In the main game, the final stage is Flou's stage, Bubby Garden Time, with the final location in said stage being Onaga's House. After beating the Warn virus boss within said stage, you are then transported to a twisting hallway with no enemies or puzzles, just a straight, long walk to the final boss as the Big Bad speaks to you, giving some exposition.
- In the post-game, you can do every area and every task in whichever order you want, but once you have done them all, a portal opens outside the Bubbyville Police Department leading to a small area where you fight the True Final Boss.
- Playable Epilogue: The post-game update allows you to play after the true end of the game, wandering with your chosen Bubby around Bubbyville, purchasing things from shops, and heading to the other areas in the game to complete epilogue missions like killing monsters.
- Story Breadcrumbs: The extensive backstory of the game and its developers is told through notes found in each of the game's levels.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Tomo, the first bubby, is killed by a sudden slice of some sort of blade, killing them instantly while you watch his upper body separate from his lower body.
- Surreal Horror: Many of the scares present in the game involve surreal and bizzare imagery, such as the shifting wall of glowing flesh that appears in the ending of the game, or the sudden horrifying visuals that sometimes appear when opening closets.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: While most of the game is typical RPG Maker Explorer Horror, the boss battles switch to first-person. Mow-mow's fight is basically a dungeon crawler, Arti makes you ward him off in first-person, Warn is a Point-and-Click Game, and Onaga Yamazaki makes you do all three before engaging you in a more traditional battle.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Onaga's House is the last of the four levels in Bubby Garden Time and the last level before the Pre-Final Boss and Final Boss.
- Virtual Pet: The in-universe Bubbaruka toy is one of these, and several segments of the game involve virtual pet care.
