First-person puzzle games are inevitably compared to Portal, especially if the character carries around a device that doesn't shoot at people or other enemies. However, very few of these games take the idea beyond a sterile lab environment. Not only does Yerba Buena do this, but it also has a creative premise. We tried out a demo for the game ahead of its May launch, and it really does live up to its "surreal" tag.

The story takes place in San Francisco during the 1970s. The city's park has been marked for demolition, and a proposed campus for a technology startup will take its place. Protestors are trying to get the city to change their minds on the deal. Crime has gone up due to a rash of biker gangs taking over the streets. There's also a phenomenon of random objects exhibiting strange properties — something that people are calling "glitching." Amidst all of this is Barb, a transplant from Michigan who moved to the city months ago but is having problems landing a permanent job. After getting a ride from her cab-driving friend, the duo gets carjacked. Barb chases after the car and ends up at the scene of a crash, and while both her friend and the carjacker have fled the scene, she finds and opens a suitcase that sends her on a big, strange adventure.

That's not the whole story. Unless you've already looked at the description on the Steam store page, the discovery of the suitcase's contents leads to the revelation that something is wrong with the world you're in. You're in a video game world, and the game protagonist is the person who carjacked your friend in the first place. Though it wasn't explicitly stated in the demo, your role in the game is an NPC acting beyond what they're supposed to do. In short, this is similar to the movie "Free Guy," except the game world is set in the '70s, while the real world is set in the near future.

The suitcase you opened contains a device called The Oscillator, and it is rather intriguing for a video game gadget. It is a device that copies the properties of one object and applies it to another. For example, if you see a sign that is moving up and down, you can take that movement and apply it to a crane so it moves up and down as well. Later on in the demo, you can apply other property types to objects, such as using the transparency of steam to make an object invisible. Different properties can be applied to an object on top of one another, and objects can have their properties reset to move to their original locations.

The Oscillator does have some limitations, however. For one thing, it can only operate from a certain range, so you can't grab onto an object's property from more than a city block away. You can only store one property at a time in the device, and you lose that property when you try to apply it to an object. The most limiting thing of all is that you can only take properties from certain objects, and you can only apply them to any other object that's in a glitched state. The limitations mean that your line of thinking for a solution isn't as freeform as you may like, but it also means that you can't go around creating a chaotic playground just for the hell of it.

The limitations don't mean that the game is suddenly devoid of creativity, even if it means that the pool of solutions is small. For example, one of your early tasks is to get past a police blockade so you can reach a space behind a building. One solution would be to move a bunch of cars to create stepping stones, so you can reach a nearby room. Another solution is to use movement properties to move half of a nearby apartment building across the street, so you don't need to jump far to reach another roof. Finding strange things like that works in the game's favor and gives the title an unexpected source of humor.

The demo features more than just moving things around in the streets of San Francisco. Hidden in the world are various dev notes from the people making the game within a game, and while it seems illogical for devs to leave audio logs like this, it fleshes out the game's setup. The demo also features a section where you're transported to a carnival setting with parts randomly set all over the place, giving you a sense of where the game setting may go.

That brings up one potential concern about the full game: its story. The San Francisco portion already feels exciting to explore, since it is both a city and time period rarely explored in games. The ability to mess around would be fun on its own. The fact that this is a video game world with hidden fragments is also exciting, and while combining these elements should create a very intriguing adventure, it also has the potential to be overwhelming. We won't know the end result until the full game drops, but it is something to keep in mind.

The presentation for the game is quite good. The voice acting is very well done, while the music doesn't fall into the trap of using material that's always associated with that San Francisco era. The mix is good and fits each situation nicely. The graphics take on the look of a living painting similar to a few other recent indie games, and while the animations aren't always smooth, it is hard to tell if this is due to a lack of polish for the demo or if this is intentional considering the game's setup. Either way, this is still a very nice-looking title that moves at a very good frame rate on mid-range hardware.

Based on the demo, Yerba Buena has already succeeded in being one strange game. Being able to move a decent number of objects almost any way you want is enjoyable, especially when you can apply that to large items like buildings. The locales aren't typically used in other titles. It remains to be seen how well the "game within a game" setup will work, but we won't have to wait long, since the full game will be released next month.