My new review is up, over on Hardcore Droid:
Bik is a point-and-click (er, tap) adventure, offering all the best of the point-and-click genre: There are piles of bizarre items to be picked up and then used in unusual ways, loveable loser characters in the tradition of Guybrush Threepwood and Roger Wilco, snarky flavortext, bizarre ways to get yourself killed, and a twisted, dramatic adventure plot.
Like the old Sierra games, it’s quite easy to experiment and get yourself killed in Bik, but the game keeps from being too punishing by autosaving right before performing an action that might lead to certain death. As I played, I grew quite frightened of seeing the autosave screen…
Knowing that Bik will autosave before character death does encourage players to try ridiculous actions, as well as to try firing Ammet’s blaster at random objects. Some scenes still needed to be repeated, either due to bad luck (avoiding the random approach of an alien sensor, for example) or because it took me several times to figure out my objective. Repeating scenes doesn’t feel like punishment or filler, but it doesn’t feel like great game design, either.
Mmmm.. nostalgia.