CHECK THIS OUT, LADIES... OH NOOO!
Pumped BMX + is a surprisingly addictive bike game about defying gravity to impress the crowd—and, ideally, reaching the finish line alive. With a solid physics engine and simple, readable visuals, it’s the kind of game you unwind with after a bout of housework, or during those evenings when you want something engaging but undemanding. For a game about extreme sports, it carries a refreshingly modest tone—just look at the carefree smile of its poster boy. It’s oddly soothing.
At its core, Pumped BMX + is about building momentum, timing your jumps, and landing safely. The controls are intuitive: one button manages speed, the shoulder buttons spin the bike, and the analogue sticks handle flips and tricks. It’s harder than it sounds. Get overconfident and you’ll crash—often spectacularly. The ragdoll physics make some wipeouts look genuinely painful, and it’s hard not to laugh when your rider folds in half on impact.
Visually, with its simple 3D models in a 2D sidescrolling setup, it clearly has handheld and mobile roots. That also means enduring what I can only describe as mobile-style progression. Each level offers four stars: one for completion, one for reaching a score threshold, another for pulling off a high-value trick, and the final—often infuriating—one for executing a specific predefined combo.
These combo challenges frequently drove me up the wall. The right-stick trick controls are just finicky enough to betray you, often triggering an unintended move at the end of a long chain and ruining the run. Since most levels offer only a few viable jumps for advanced tricks, failure usually means restarting from scratch.
In these later stages, I found myself unexpectedly immersed—leaning with the bike, reacting instinctively, as if muscle memory had taken over. The final division is the most enjoyable: stripped of progression pressure, you can focus purely on finishing the course cleanly and fast, leaving the remaining stars for later if you care to chase them.
I can comfortably give Pumped BMX + a modest recommendation. It’s a low-stakes game with a decent sense of humor, especially fun to play with friends watching and reacting to each brutal crash. It doesn’t aim high, but it delivers a few solid laughs—and it even sparked my curiosity about the Trials series, which I suspect offers a similar experience, just on two motorized wheels instead of pedals.
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