Garten of Banban 2

I went into Garten of Banban 2 expecting more of the same threadbare kindergarten atmosphere, and I got exactly that, plus just enough new wrinkles to make it worth tracking if you already survived the first episode. The sequel picks up the moment the first game cuts to black, dropping you into an underground facility beneath the kindergarten with a crushed Jumbo Josh under a fallen lift and Banban's voice crackling through the speakers, pretending to be a helpful security guard. That framing device, where the game lulls you into trusting a character who is clearly not trustworthy, is probably the most intentional piece of writing Euphoric Brothers has attempted so far in the series. Gameplay is still first-person navigation built around keycard fetching, drone puzzles, and survival sprints. What this chapter adds is variety. You will collect Opila Bird chicks in a herding segment, fire a cannon to solve a seashell puzzle, take biological samples from dead things in the Medical Sector, and run from Nabnab, a four-legged spider creature who drops from above if he catches you in the storage corridors. None of these set pieces are polished in the way a studio with more time and budget would polish them, but they arrive quickly enough to keep the hour-ish runtime from flatlining. The chase sequences, particularly the Banbaleena sprint near the end, are at least varied from one another, which was a criticism correctly levelled at the first game's single scary section. A drone customisation system also debuts here, and while it is cosmetic, it is a small signal that the developers are thinking about player investment between entries. The structural problems from the first game have not been solved. The sprint mechanic requires holding the stick rather than toggling, and on controller that means a slipped thumb during a timed escape means starting the whole section over. Some puzzles lean on trial-and-error in ways that feel like padding rather than design, and the voice acting, which includes Banban performed by one of the brothers in an undisguised speaking voice, gives the whole thing a fever-dream quality that is either charming or grating depending on your tolerance. The audience for this game is not really adults hunting for a well-crafted horror experience. It is kids and teenagers who found the mascot designs on YouTube, and the lore community that has built genuinely impressive wikis around what is, when you squint, a strange little serialised mystery running across many cheap chapters. At roughly an hour of content and a mixed Steam reception sitting around 69 percent positive across thousands of reviews, this sits in an odd place. It is not a good game by conventional craft metrics, but it is a strangely committed one. The series trajectory, showing gradual improvement by the fourth entry, suggests Euphoric Brothers were learning in public, and chapter two is one of the louder proof-of-concept moments in that arc. If the mascots mean nothing to you, there is no reason to start here. If you have a kid who is already invested, or if you find ultra-low-budget mascot horror genuinely fascinating as a cultural artefact, chapter two is the point where the series starts finding its footing, however unevenly.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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