Yerba Buena is a game caught between two worlds. Set in an alternate 1970s San Francisco, it pairs charming visual design with a physics puzzle mechanic that shows real promise, yet stumbles hard when it comes to narrative coherence and basic logic.
The game takes its name from the original settlement that would become the city. You play as Barb, an out-of-work transplant from the Midwest who finds herself mounting a one-woman rescue mission when a friend gets taken hostage by a biker gang. The SFPD, in a decision that strains credibility even within the game's own universe, decides the hostage isn't worth saving and plans to storm the building anyway. This unlikely setup kicks off your adventure into time travel and environmental puzzles.
The art direction is the game's strongest suit. The visual style feels lifted straight from a graphic novel, reminiscent of Telltale's earlier work. Characters are richly detailed with period-appropriate clothing and hairstyles that ground everything firmly in the '70s. San Francisco itself comes across as an almost mythological version of the city, rendered in vibrant colors that capture something genuinely appealing. A jaunty soundtrack rounds out the presentation nicely.
Where things fall apart is the writing. The plot doesn't flow naturally from one moment to the next. Instead, the game seems to lurch between fixed story beats it wants to hit, making whatever logical leaps necessary to get there. Characters reach bizarre conclusions. Tonal shifts whip unpredictably. When you discover that the biker gang is actually a Vietnam War unit that was experimented on to gain superpowers, you learn this from a school award-style certificate with their gang name filled in on a blank line. It's treated with complete earnestness despite being utterly absurd.
The strangest element involves the gang leader, Bear, who can literally reload a save file when he dies. A menu pops up over his corpse as he selects the option to reset time. Other characters, including ones not in the gang, are fully aware this is happening and simply shrug it off as normal. There's no attempt to explore this mechanically or thematically. It's just... there.
The core gameplay mechanic, called The Oscillator, is where the game shows genuine creativity. It's essentially the device that made Portal work. At first, it lets you copy the movement properties of one object and apply them to another. You can grab the motion of a speeding car and transfer it to an apartment building, causing the whole structure to fly across the street so you can reach rooftops on the next block. Later, it gains the ability to copy vapor properties and apply them to solid objects, letting you or other items pass through obstacles that would normally be impassable.
In the 90-minute demo, there were only two substantial areas to experiment with The Oscillator beyond an initial training section: a San Francisco city block and a psychedelic amusement park existing in some kind of pocket dimension. The puzzles here are a mixed bag. Some feel genuinely clever. Others seem poorly conceived. But there's enough here to spark curiosity about what the full game might attempt.
The setting itself feels like it was built by someone who visited San Francisco for a conference or two and decided to set a game there. A major plot point involves a tech mogul trying to destroy a local park by building a giant TV antenna, which looks like it's taking recent Silicon Valley problems and awkwardly transplanting them into the 1970s without proper context or thematic integration.
Barb is likeable enough as a protagonist, and her character design fits the world. But she can't carry a narrative this fractured. The game's light-hearted tone doesn't mesh with what it's actually depicting, and it's not entirely clear whether any of this confusion is intentional.
Yerba Buena releases May 26 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. The puzzle mechanics have potential. Whether the writing can catch up remains to be seen.
Author Emily Chen: "The Oscillator is clever enough to make me want to solve more puzzles, but the plot is such a bewildering mess that I'm genuinely unsure if I'll want to stick around for the full experience."
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