Back in 2020 Neal reviewed Summer in Mara on the Nintendo Switch. It was a game I had kept an eye out for, but ultimately his review helped to convince me that it simply wasn’t a game I’d get much enjoyment from. So consider my surprise when I learned that Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara wasn’t a spin-off sequel to that title, but only after playing did I realize that this was a continuation of the Summer in Mara series. Much like Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, Koa and the Five Pirates throws the original design of its predecessor out the window and has turned the farming-exploration game into a 3D platformer, which feels akin to the pick up and play titles from the GameCube/PS2-era. The end result is a very accessible platformer that will challenge even veterans quite a bit.
Koa and the Five Pirates picks up, I think, a few years after the events of Summer in Mara. Koa is traveling around the islands of Mara when she suddenly receives word that pirates have raided the village of Qualïs. Thankfully, these pirates have mostly done so as a prank to challenge anyone to take on the pirate trials of Mara. It’s up to Koa to triumph over these challenges and return peace to Mara. Along the way there are a number of friendly villagers to talk to as well as various islands to explore.
The best point of comparison for Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara is something like Super Mario 3D Land. Each island has one or more stages in which your objective is simply to reach the end goal. Koa has a fairly simple moveset consisting of a run, a dash and a bomb jump. The more advanced technique is a sort of long jump that you can chain into a roll, giving Koa a lot of momentum. Along the way there are hidden collectibles that you can find to upgrade the ship that you use to travel between the stages or to unlock cosmetics like outfits and backpacks. Movement feels pretty good, though I did find myself often wanting to use the more advanced mechanics while having to adjust to Koa not controlling ‘exactly’ like Mario. If you play stages at a leisurely pace, the game is great for younger players that aren’t as familiar with 3D-platformers. In that sense it really reminded me of games I grew up with like Rayman 2, Toy Story 2, and the SpongeBob games. I will say that there isn’t as much character to the different people you meet on your journey, but perhaps this is because it wants to tie in more closely with the first game.
The real challenge is presented at the end of a level. After completing a stage you are presented with the time it took you to reach the goal. There’s a bronze, silver and gold medal attached to this completion time, and this really incentivized me to complete stages as fast as possible. Whereas on your first attempt running is simply optional, to get a gold medal you will need to run, long jump and find shortcuts everywhere. Don’t expect Neon White levels of speedrunning tech, but there definitely is something satisfying about redoing a stage and learning all the ins and outs of a level to get to the goal as quickly as you can. Later levels especially can be quite a challenge due to playing with mechanics like disappearing platforms and ice-physics. This gameplay loop, however, is very rewarding, and while not stated outright, I think this really can be engaging for parents who want to play with their children. That having been said, the overall presentation of Koa and the Five Pirates can come across as a bit plain at times. Static character portraits, compressed visuals, simple level geometry and a lack of meaningful rewards make the game just feel a bit unpolished. When it comes to gameplay this really doesn’t matter, but the soundtrack repeats quite a few tracks and some of the additional levels are really barren. There’s a minigame where you have to guide a crane to the bottom of the sea to grab a collectible, but it basically boils down to mashing the ZR-button and avoiding enemies. Then there are levels where the goal is simply to talk to one person who’s somewhere on the island. It seems at times that there was a desire to make the ocean, your world map, feel expansive with a lot of islands to visit. But ultimately these can just come across as set dressing. The ‘boss’ challenges also aren’t really anything to write home about. The majority of them are races, where you either need to reach the end of a goal or defeat the boss by tossing items or hitting switches. They suffice for certain, but I wish that their imaginative designs were put to better use.
Overall, I think that Koa and the Five Pirates is a great reworking of the Summer in Mara world and characters. Being a 3D character platformer just makes the gameplay feel fast-paced and welcoming. Like I stated, for younger players this is a great introduction to these types of games if you’re looking for something that might be even more accessible than Mario. For platforming veterans there’s some decent challenge in getting gold medals in every stage, but other than that it might feel a bit too simple. The game might be unpolished in a few places, but there was very little that hampers the gameplay experience. Leaving the door open for future Mara adventures, I think that these characters really lend themselves to different genres and experiences. Even if I didn’t pick up on many of the callbacks to Summer in Mara, I could tell that the developers really like these characters and this world they’ve created. Perhaps it’s time to explore the RTS or RPG genre in Mara?
There really aren’t any game designers out there like Shu Takumi. The Capcom veteran responsible for creating the Ace Attorney series understands like few other designers what makes a good mystery and how to design mechanics that deepen the player's connection to that mystery. I adore the Ace Attorney series with all my heart, but it is a little-known standalone DS game that I’d consider Takumi’s magnum opus. And after thirteen years of waiting, the game has finally returned in a definitive, polished-up version. For those who are already familiar with this game’s tricks, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective on Switch is the perfect version to relive its twisting tale and vibrant characters. For those who are new to the experience, something truly special awaits you.
Usually in games, death is pretty much the end, but with a death is where Ghost Trick begins. You play as Sissel, a recently departed soul with a bad case of amnesia who died in a junkyard at night. As a ghost, Sissel possesses–pun intended–the ability to control the world of the living by performing his ghost tricks. These tricks can impact objects in the world to spin, whirl, fold, twist, turn on machinery, and much much more. Your goal is simple: find out how and why you died. Unfortunately, your only lead seems to be a detective named Lynne, who herself is the target of a hitman, and she just died as well. Sissel’s spirit, however, is able to travel back four minutes before her death and use his trick to alter Lynne’s fate. From there, the story twists and turns as you slowly learn more and more about strange events and deaths taking place all over town. Ghost Trick is full of great scenes that make its world come alive (yes, this one too).
Gameplay in Ghost Trick consists of two segments. On the one hand, there are the discoveries, as I call them. During these moments you are using your ghost powers to traverse rooms and obstacles to find certain people to interact with or learn more about what is going on in the story. As a soul, you can trace a line, either by using the touch screen similar to the DS-version or by moving the joystick between your soul and the core of another object. Once you’re in the other core, you can leave the Ghost World and trick the object. For example a foldable ladder can be extended, an umbrella can be opened, or a bell can be rung. Most of the time, this will attract the intention of people around the scene, and present new routes for you to get to your destination. Here you will learn more about the characters and the way they interact with others and the world around them. This knowledge comes in handy when dealing with the bodies.
Ghost Trick really turns into a detective game when Sissel comes across a dead body. Being able to turn back the clock to four minutes before that death took place, and with the ghost tricks at your disposal, it is possible to prevent a death from happening and change that individual’s fate. The game truly comes into its own during these moments when you are, in real-time, learning about how the death happened and how it can be stopped. Each death is set up like a Rube Goldberg machine, where the individual pieces can be tricked to change the outcome. At certain points you’ll change the fate of the person involved, causing the scene to shift significantly and open up new paths. The game is entirely linear in its solutions but the combination of the ticking clock while solving the death shifts your approach every time. Using that knowledge is key to learning how each murder can be prevented.
But the puzzles aren’t the only thing that made Ghost Trick a cult hit; its heart truly lies with its cast of eclectic characters. These range from Lynne’s incredible optimism and determination, to probably the greatest animal sidekick in all of video games in the form of Missile. As you encounter more and more of those involved, you start to see the connections between the characters and how Sissle relates to them as well. Even for those who only appear for one or two scenes, their animations and writing just sell the character immediately, such as Inspector Cabanella’s wild dancing motions, the way Missile jumps around, and how the Junkyard’s superintendent communicates with a pigeon. The music is also a suspenseful fusion of jazz and electronic beats that do a great job of communicating the situation Sissel finds himself in. It’s definitely not as tense or diverse as the Ace Attorney games are known for, but it’s a well balanced soundtrack that has some great tunes.
Ghost Trick is a phenomenal experience for first time players, but this remaster is a little bit barebones for those who might be hoping for some new chapters or stories. The game has a great unlockable art gallery that is a treat for those who are big fans of this game. There is also a jukebox that has both the original and the new arranged soundtrack. The real new piece of content here is a puzzle mode, where you simply solve a set of sliding puzzles in a grid of several sizes. There are some in-game achievements that can be unlocked by playing these, but don’t expect any new substantial content. I like some of the UI changes that have been made, but really whether you’re playing the original DS release, the mobile port, or this new remaster, you can’t go wrong with any version of this game. The biggest advantage here is that the game just looks a whole lot shinier in HD and that it is just great to have Ghost Trick back for new players to experience for the very first time.
Replaying Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective really cemented my feeling that this is still one of best mystery stories ever told in the medium. The gameplay is inventive and makes every trick feel surprising and new, while reinforcing the idea of how objects relate to each other. But it’s the cast of Ghost Trick that has remained endearing after all these years. Finding out what happened to Sissel, how Lynne is involved, and how everyone on this one strange night is connected: that story just feels like something that cannot be told in a television series or movie, but truly stands on its own as a game. It is no surprise to me that Shu Takumi apparently often revisits this game to reflect on how he has grown as a designer. If you’re already familiar with this game, you won’t be missing out on any meaningful extras by skipping this release, but if you are new to Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective it is a must play. It is one of those games that doesn’t need a sequel or prequel but is a perfectly self-contained story that truly hasn’t aged a day. I couldn’t be happier that Ghost Trick has been brought back to life one more time.
Acting like a detective always feels a bit like cheating in video games. Rarely does a mystery game deliver on the premise of the player putting all the clues together, without it coming across as if there is a guiding hand shadowing over you. Just relying on your observational skills and putting all the little pieces together is absolutely one of the most rewarding experiences in games. Titles like Return of the Obra Dinn, A Hand with Many Fingers and last year's Immortality have a win-state so to speak, but the true victory is when the player arrives at the ‘Wait!? I GET IT’ moment of realization as to how the different pieces fit together. The Case of the Golden Idol is a truly phenomenal addition to this subset of detective games, spinning an intriguing narrative that makes you feel incredible for figuring out how it all comes together.
The Case of the Golden Idol follows the history of several English-inspired noblemen around the 1700s and the trail left behind by a small golden idol. You play as an omnipotent observer where you investigate what can only be described as tableaus. Each tableau depicts a moment in time that coincides with a death. The tableaus have little interactive sets, where you can click on people or objects and add words to your notebook. It is up to you to complete several objectives using the information you collect. This can vary from identifying all the individuals that are part of the tableau, where all of them were located during the time of the event happening, as well as their intertwining relationships with one another. Some of these are pretty straightforward, like servants and lords. But others can suddenly have entered the tableau for the first time, or be a random person caught up in the event. The tableau is completed when you can put together what specifically happened at that time and, usually, who passed away due to what reason.
The game is incredibly hands off. All the clues are numbered in a checklist at the bottom of the screen and you can access your thoughts at any time. You might perhaps start out with naming all the individuals that are seen on screen, or you can immediately try and put the story together. The navigation is really straightforward with the player dragging the clues or words to particular fields and entering them to complete the lines of thought. All of this is presented in a fantastic visual style that is somewhat reminiscent of LucasArts games from the ‘90s. I particularly loved the changing musical styles as you investigate different scenes within the tableau. When seeing a large map the music has a theme, but when you start looking into a cabin, a violin is added to speed up the tempo, turning dire when you come across the body and have to figure out what exactly happened. The only thing I’d knock against the soundtrack is that it does get a bit repetitive when you are stuck solving a puzzle. At times, I did throw on something else in the background when I was really trying to put together one particularly challenging scene.
All of this makes The Case of the Golden Idol a fantastic tale about revenge, absolute power, and the corruption that said power brings forth. The problem is that it is also a game I want to say as little as possible about, because the discovery and investigation is what makes the experience stand out quite a bit. If you love titles like the Ace Attorney series for their puzzlebox-like approach, The Case of the Golden Idol does similar things but makes the logical lines much less obvious. This caused me several times to scream with excitement when all I did was realize who was in what place and why. It really cannot be compared to a visual novel in that sense, giving the power over its narrative to you the player instead. The Return of the Obra Dinn is the closest analogy, but even when I think that, the way that The Case of the Golden Idol uses its world and characters is much more coherent to follow. The tableaus can be dizzying at first, full of moments where you absolutely have no clue what is going on. But figuring that stuff out, realizing why X is here and what that means for Y, or that someone is referring to a moment from a previous tableau made me excited in a way very few detective games have over the last few years.
And even if you do get stuck, the hint system is just a marvelous little bit of accessible design. If you get stuck, the game doesn’t fill in the right words for you. Instead you are presented with some general advice, like laying out all the clues you have, taking a break to think or even recontextualizing the words you’ve found so far. If you want a hint after that, you are still not given one, but rather have to fill out a small test of putting the right words underneath objects and characters you’ve already come across. Then you get to select from four general hints and that hint isn’t even spelling out the answer, but rather suggesting a way to think about the characters and their motivation. It is a truly beautiful system that still wants the player to come to the realization of what has happened, but does not ruin the game. I genuinely hope to see more games employ these kinds of hint systems, because it made using the hint system feel rewarding, rather than a moment of disappointment.
The Nintendo Switch version also just runs great. The variety of control options is fantastic. You can opt for using the traditional touch screen in handheld mode. In TV-mode you can use the joystick to move around a cursor freely and even increase the speed of the cursor movement with the triggers. And finally you can also manually browse through the game just using the directional-buttons or the right stick to snap to the nearest object. This setup is fantastic for controlling a point-and-click adventure game in a way that feels much more natural on console: a fantastic job by the developers for creating this.
As much as I want to keep on gushing about the ideas and stories in The Case of the Golden Idol, I really don’t want to take anything away from those who may be interested in playing it. There is an additional DLC chapter that has even more stories to discover and those are without a doubt some of the hardest puzzles in the game. Even if the idea of a point-and-click adventure game scares you off, The Case of the Golden Idol can be understood and enjoyed by anyone who has an interest in detective fiction. The stories can be gruesome and horrific at times, but that also makes them intriguing puzzleboxes to sit down and solve. At times while playing I looked up at the clock and realized I had been squinting at the screen and was lost in thought solving a puzzle for nearly an hour. The year of narrative bangers just keeps on rolling and if you are even remotely interested in solving a good mystery, The Case of the Golden Idol should be at the top of your list!
Wearing your inspiration on your sleeve isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, I think it’s wonderful that developers can take ideas from successful titles and adjust them to reach new audiences or introduce their own take on similar design ideas. Considering Smushi Come Home as an indie-fied Breath of the Wild is really selling this game short. Its small-scale adventure makes for a breezy and accessible adventure game that is perfect for those looking for a brisk and wholesome experience.
The elevator pitch would go something like this: Smushi and his siblings live on a small little island in the middle of a lake. One day, a bird comes and snatches Smushi away from his family. It’s up to Smushi to travel through the forest and find his way home. Along the way he encounters all sorts of inhabitants of the forest and helps out wherever he can.
Smushi Come Home, at its heart, is a 3D collect-a-thon platformer. You travel around areas in the woods and encounter all sorts of critters that can help you on your way back home. The writing is immediately endearing, capturing the personality of the characters using just text and a tiny sound effect. As you walk, jump, glide and climb around, you can collect crystals to obtain new items and even some cute mushroom caps to change how Smushi looks. The gameplay loop mostly involves you finding certain key items to progress to new areas in the forest.
Looking at the gameplay, you may immediately notice similarities to Breath of the Wild in its stamina and climbing system. But I think that Smushi actually pulls from a lot of different sources. The gliding reminded me of 3D platformers like Rayman 2; the world and writing felt inspired by A Short Hike. The developer has really mixed up several mechanics into what feels like a really solid 3D platformer. You can sense the love and inspiration taken from other titles, but this particular combination makes Smushi really feel like its own game. It is also helped by its soothing visual style, which uses some lovely depth of field effects to make Smushi feel small in this world, as well as the soundtrack, which has some super endearing tracks that make the world welcoming to explore.
I think its strength really lies in the fact that Smushi Come Home knows what type of game it wants to be. It doesn’t feel dragged out with an endless list of quests or items, it doesn’t require perfect precision platforming or lengthy puzzle solving.It is really just a cute and fun 3D platformer that will take you a few hours to complete and left me feeling super satisfied. If you have younger or inexperienced players that may find something like moving around in a 3D space too challenging, find Breath of the Wild controls too intense, or just want to relax with a cozy game, Smushi Come Home is absolutely perfect. In fact, on Switch it even ran at a buttery smooth framerate, something that can’t always be said for other 3D platformers on the system.
Overall Smushi Come Home is the definition of a wholesome experience. Seeing this type of game is becoming a lot more common, but thankfully the remixing of several types of traversal controls makes it stand out on its own. It’s not about speedrunning, collecting hundreds of objects, or even fighting any enemies. Instead, Smushi finds joy in the moments where you can just explore this big world as a tiny little mushroom, making it just feel great to play. For those wanting to have a brief but cozy experience for an afternoon, or if you want to introduce a younger player to what a 3D-platformer is all about, this is one indie you don’t want to miss.
I’ve always felt that you can measure the successful eras of Nintendo’s consoles in two different ways. During the Wii U and GameCube era, Nintendo seemed at times to be more interested in experimentation, whether it was through rhythm games using bongos, or developing a game where the player had to commit to a daily exercise routine using the Balance Board peripheral. However, the enormous success of the Switch hasn’t seen as many of Nintendo’s quirks as we are used to. Instead they’ve been snooping around in their back catalog, looking for older franchises to revive after a long hiatus. This is similar to how during the Wii days we saw sequels to Excitebike and Punch-Out!!. After Mario Strikers and Famicom Detective Club, the GBA classics of Advance Wars and its sequel have been fully remade by the team at WayForward for the Switch. The end result is a satisfying return to a strategic classic that has never felt better to play and offers plenty of missions for new recruits and veterans alike.
Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy game that focuses on the player commanding an army of several units to complete objectives. In a sense you can consider the franchise to be a bit of a counterpart to the Fire Emblem series. Where (modern) Fire Emblem places a lot of focus on individual characters that you control in battle, Advance Wars is a much more straightforward wargame. There is no consistent weapon triangle to consider, but each unit has specific advantages and disadvantages in and out of combat. Tanks, for example, are durable and fast units, but can’t deal with battle copters or battleships very well. Infantry and mechs can be used to capture cities and gain resources but are quickly defeated and usually require transport to help them get to specific locations. Each mission has a carefully designed map that has either a set number of units or allows you to allocate funds towards new units over time. Therefore, there is a lot of emphasis on tactical strategy and making a battle plan instead of simply adapting on the fly. Advance Wars is incredibly rewarding in that aspect; not just by making each encounter feel like a little puzzle in its own right, but by making you the player feel smart and strategic for acting upon a plan you’ve made at the beginning of the map.
That’s not to say that there is no character to the game. Each mission is led by a commanding officer (CO) that has a particular power that helps their units and is also at the heart of Advance Wars’ story. While definitely not winning any writing awards, the characterization of Andy, Sami, Max and their opponents never failed to charm me. The biggest new features are both a map designer that allows you to create your own unique objectives and maps that can be shared online with others. The online multiplayer is also something that will entice strategy fanatics, where you not only pick your preferred CO–each with their own special ability–but also need to think carefully about placing and moving around units. The package offers quite a bit of content for those who like to continue experimenting with the mechanics after the main campaign. Don’t expect any twists to the original source material or gameplay, however. Re-Boot Camp is a very true remake that doesn’t bring any major changes, but mostly nails its presentation and the strategic angle that made the original games cult classics in their own right.
That new visual approach is very fitting, making the experience feel much more like a commanding officer overseeing a battlefield on a map. I’ve seen people compare the aesthetic to that of toy-like war figures, but I think it just adds to the idea that you’re pursuing different battles instead of directly controlling your soldiers and vehicles. As well, the characters themselves have never looked better. While the game doesn’t feature full voice acting, mostly using its extensive voice-cast for opening lines or key phrases, it does help with giving the different COs a lot of personality, especially when activating their unique abilities that come paired with a nice animated cutscene. The UI and interface is very clean, though it did feel a bit too simple at first glance. Many of the ways you can navigate the different battlefield views aren’t really explained; for instance, holding down the B-button on an enemy unit shows their range, which is something that is super helpful and beats navigating through menus to find. At these times, it feels like the games are holding on a bit too tight to their original GBA counterparts, especially releasing so shortly after Fire Emblem: Engage, which felt much more slick in its UI options and navigation tools. Of course, both games have different objectives, with Advance Wars being a bit more traditional and much less focused on the individuality of units being controlled. This felt like a bit of a letdown, since there were many other small improvements that could’ve been made here to add more personality and depth.
The worst offender in my opinion is the frankly dull soundtrack. The same music gets reused quite a bit during missions and when an objective can take upwards of half an hour or more to complete, the audio aspect ends up being super tedious. AW therefore quickly turned into a “podcast-game” for me, where I always wanted something on in the background while playing the game. There’s some fun mixups with the soundtrack when using special abilities, but the main themes all blend together quickly, leaving them with very little impact. What compounds this is that you will be repeating a lot of mission objectives again and again. Some see you simply routing the enemies or capturing the HQ, but there are a few that are more specific ones like defending a particular unit, or being the first army that controls a set number of structures. I think that strategy games are likely to fall into these traps, especially when playing them for prolonged periods of time. Ultimately, taking on one or two missions per day is probably the best way to experience AW. The game is pretty substantial and while I had fun with it, I did turn off the battle animations rather quickly to make the game progress at a faster pace.
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp is exactly what it promises. A polished and fine tuned remake of the original two Advance Wars games. In this package you’ll get two great strategic experiences that come with plenty of missions, objectives, multiplayer modes and even a map creator to keep you entertained for a good long while. Though the music may get a tad repetitive and the game feels best suited for short play sessions, these two games are a great return to form for the Advance Wars series. It does leave me hopeful that the next iteration will put less emphasis on the visual “Re-Boot” and more on the gameplay “Advancement” of this franchise.
I also wrote about how I felt uncomfortable playing Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp in the face of the actual Ukraine war happening in Europe. If you're curious about that, you can read that article here.
I experienced a weird sort of whiplash with the announcement and release of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp (AW). Not only was the game’s release postponed twice, with all signs pointing towards a largely finished title, but the major cause of its primary delay was an event that at first had little to do with the game itself. The illegal war and subsequent invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces that began in 2022, arguably earlier when considering the invasion in 2014 of the Crimea, put Nintendo in an uncomfortable position. Not only when thinking about their family-friendly brand, but also how possibly some of the original designs of opposing forces in Advance Wars could resemble modern countries. God-forbid Nintendo would take a stance during an illegal war that has killed over 350.000 people since it began. Now, Re-Boot Camp has finally arrived and while it is certainly a fine strategic title that honors the original games it has remade, it also left me feeling hollow while playing it. A war is taking place as I am writing this, less than a day's drive away (comparable to the distance from Miami to Philadelphia). “Ïn light of recent world events'' may have postponed this release, but these events are still looming over these advance wars.
About two hours into Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot: Camp, the latest long overdue Nintendo franchise revival, I decided to turn off the battle animations. The world of Advance Wars sees you navigating a globe as you guide the ‘Orange Star Army’ through several other nations such as “Blue Moon” (vaguely inspired by Russia), “Golden Comet” (taking influence from Japan) and “Green Earth” (seemingly based on Germany) completing objectives. Each nation has its own type of terrain, but certain landmarks always return like mountains that provide a high altitude, woods that give cover, and cities and bases that can be captured to gain additional resources. Every time you select one of your units, be they infantry or vehicles, your platoon fights in a little battle on whatever type of terrain you are encountering the opponent. Not only does this take up a considerable amount of time during the game, there was also something off while watching the little cutscenes.
As your little platoon enters the city to fight an opposing force, the camera zooms in from a world map overview to a little ‘’diorama’’ that shows the attacking army firing upon the opposing threat. After gunfire is exchanged, the defeated vehicles or people are blasted away and the camera returns to the world map and sees a little explosion, indicating the defeat of a platoon. The background of this cutscene changes depending on the terrain, such as in the city where the fighting takes place on the streets next to buildings and streetlights.
It was this particular scene, which lasts no more than ten seconds, that made me feel uncomfortable. Because every time that camera perspective changed I did not see tiny little 3D models shooting comedic fire at a fake video game enemy. The images of people fearing for their lives, in a place they called home days or even weeks before, kept on flashing through my mind instead.
See, Nintendo may think that the time is right to release this game that is about warfare given ‘current world events’, but while playing I often thought about the cruelty of war that is simply cleaned off in games like this. We can pretend that the invasion of Ukraine has passed its peak in media coverage and is now another of so many ‘background conflicts’, that it starts to feel like the new normal. But it is beyond scary that I live on a continent where an active war is now playing out. The idea that one day a madman woke up and decided to put an entire continent into chaos is something that I think we in Europe will never be able to truly process. I’m not closely or personally tied to Ukraine, but it looms over every aspect of life here on a daily basis. I go out to do grocery shopping and can’t get something as simple as cooking oil because importing sunflower seeds has halted. I turn on the news and see images of people who were living in a similar situation as I am today, having to take shelter in dim dark-lit basements to avoid the literal bombs dropping on their cities. And that’s not even to think about the anxiety of having a possible continental war with Russia if the conflict escalates. In the end, this is nothing compared to the actual horrors that Ukrainians have to deal with on a daily basis. Staying and choosing to survive and fight this invasion, knowing that the rest of the world cannot just intervene, fearing for their own safety.
I’m fully aware that games like Call of Duty, Battlefield and other games about war have kept on releasing ever since the start of the invasion. Those games have plenty of issues on their own, from the depiction of actual war crimes, to the treatment of minorities and non-US allies and opponents. It is not like I am expecting Nintendo of all game companies to lead this charge towards presenting a more in-depth take on the themes or war in their video games. But for a company that rarely ventures into the realm of games depicting actual warfighting and prefers to opt for the fantastical in Fire Emblem, the science-fiction in a Xenoblade Chronicles or the comical in a Splatoon, I was so much more aware of how spineless the storytelling and context is in Advance Wars. Especially when contrasted with something like Fire Emblem: Engage, which has several scenes of the characters reflecting on the horrors of war and what the human cost is of these conflicts. There is an extensive story and cutscene in Engage about the destruction of villages by the opposing forces and what this means to the characters fighting this war. When characters are defeated their death can feel meaningful or their loss is tragic in both a contextual sense of having one less unit to fight with, but also because their defeat is felt by your other allies. In my opinion the solution is not to simply ‘stop making games about wars’, but rather use that framework as a way to tell a story that reflects on what war actually means. How a war starts and in what ways it can even be fought can not only make for a more engaging experience, but possibly even leave the player with a way to process their own feelings on war and the politics surrounding them.
Advance Wars at times feels insulting in the way it simplifies and polishes the warfighting experience. I know full well that these games haven’t been designed with this goal in mind, but it isn’t like wars in *checks notes* 2001 weren’t full of horrors and casualties. The image of the squeaky clean red tanks rolling into a city to fire a few blasts at opposing enemy soldiers just does not feel entertaining to me anymore. Those cities aren’t backdrops for the people still living in them. I have seen the images of people standing near the ruins of their homes, looking for survivors, treasured possessions or even basic necessities. Advance Wars in 2023 just does not click in the same way as it did back in the early 2000’s. It is such a simple outlook on the complexities of war, the human costs behind invasions and the actual consequences when the tanks have crushed the roads and only have left destruction behind. As much fun as Andy, Max, Sami and Nell are, I never stopped thinking: “Are they aware that they are invading other nations and literally bombing down cities? And if so, why are they not reflecting on what is actually happening”?
By not taking a stance, Advance Wars feels more toothless than ever in its theming. Especially during a time where taking a stance, where reflecting on the ways wars are fought and won is more crucial than ever before. Nintendo may have wanted to keep politics desperately out of the release of these two games, but it has only made it more apparent to me how flimsy the actual wars in “Advance Wars'' feel. Hopefully next time it won’t just be another Re-boot camp, but a fundamental rethinking of what Advance Wars is and can be about. Inspiration for that should not be hard to find.
I think at this point I can safely say that 3D platformers are probably my favorite genre out there. There is something so fundamentally satisfying about walking around, exploring all kinds of worlds, interacting with objects and making my own way through a carefully designed level while getting more and more comfortable with the moveset at my disposal. From Neon White’s high-paced action, to the more combat-focused experience of Blue Fire, to the creativity on display in A Hat in Time, and that’s just accounting for the ones not created by juggernauts like Nintendo themselves or even Rareware back in the day. Clive ‘n Wrench truly wishes to be among those reclaiming the 3D platformers from the late 90’s and early 2000’s. But the experience leaves a lot to be desired from both a fundamental level as well as this particular version on the Nintendo Switch.
Clive ‘N Wrench sees you controlling the titular characters on a quest through time and space to stop the evil Dr. Draucus, who has been traveling throughout time to spread his evil elixir and gain world domination. Thankfully Clive’s sister Nancy has created a time-machine which enables you to travel to the past, collect pocket watches to fix the space-time continuum and stop the evildoers that have aligned with the Doctor. The game began development over ten years ago by a single developer, Rob Wass. The game is pretty packed with content, there’s an abundance of worlds to explore with each one designed after a different time period or theme. On the surface it truly feels like one of the 3D platformers from the golden age at the tail end of the 90’s and 2000’s when character platformers were everywhere.
The thing about character-based platformers is that usually they rely on their characters to a certain extent to keep the player engaged. Yes, franchises like Mario and Sonic had a bit of an advantage, making their jump to 3D after their characters were long established, but especially for the wave of 3D platformers that came after them, character was everything. I don’t think that series like Crash Bandicoot, Banjo-Kazooie, Conker and Rayman would have been as successful if not for their unique design and personality. Clive ‘N Wrench really feels as thin as paper in this sense. While the worldbuilding and designs are fine, during gameplay there is very little to make you feel attached to Clive, Wrench, Nancy and any of the other supporting characters that show up. The one exception might be the bosses, who each get a dedicated cutscene before you engage with them, but even then there is a real lack of explanation of why they are involved in this. The entire setup of the world and the reason for events happening feels like an afterthought, and what does not help is that the cutscenes in particular are rather horrendous to look at. Lots of exaggerated movements that are designed to come across as cartoony feel still and slow and lack the dynamic range that conveys a connection to the player. That’s not even speaking of the writing and text boxes which simply pop-in and dump the same text every time you engage with them. I was especially annoyed when I returned to the main hub world after clearing four worlds and Nancy would still say that I should go to the ‘orientation’ level to learn how to control Clive and Wrench. It made me lose interest in the world and character very quickly.
Of course, mentioning the story for a 3D platformer isn’t doing the game justice. Because what truly matters at the end of the day is how these characters control and feel while playing them. In terms of pure control I think that the best point of comparison would be a game like A Hat in Time, but feeling a tad more floaty and a bit more imprecise in its execution. Aside from the standard jump, double jump, spin-attack, ground pound and ‘helicopter whirl’ (using Wrench as the literal helicopter), there is very little that sets apart the moveset of the main characters. There is a super jump that can be executed as either a backflip or by holding the R-button. It feels slightly too overpowered, but can be combined with the double jump and the helicopter whirl to traverse long distances. The real issue is in how controlling the characters feel. Oftentimes the game comes across as too sluggish, where you really can’t gauge well if you’ll actually make a particular jump and at what point you should try to find a safe landing spot. There is the implication that you can combine a sort of slide jump to gain speed, but it never felt particularly satisfying.
That is before you even consider the level design, which mostly feels restrictive due to the levels being broken up into several segments.While I like the theming and attention to detail in these worlds there are some weird structural decisions that hamper the experiences. In each level you go around and find upwards of ten ancient stones (the power stars of this game). Most of them are achieved by helping characters with particular quests or finding them scattered around in the level. The real issue is that there really isn’t that much variety in gaining them. Catch the running rabbit? You get a stone. Do a ground pound on a particular button? Obtain a stone. Destroy X amount of objects? You get a stone. Of course, games like Super Mario Sunshine have similar structures, but because of the way levels are set up, the repetitiveness of the game really gets in the way of making these quests enjoyable. It also means interacting with characters and as stated before that gets quite tedious. I think what really could’ve helped here was if levels weren’t restricted to you finding a set amount of ancient stones to allow you to beat a boss and only after beating them unlocking the next world. This game is very lineair in that structure, and while that isn’t a problem on its face, it does mean that you will need to both explore each world at least until you’ve found enough stones and beat the bosses of each world, which are locked behind a specific stone requirement. Also the bosses just suck.
The bosses are some of the most disappointing I’ve faced in a game. They can’t be tackled out of order, and the first one you’ll encounter is incredibly difficult. It feels much like a Crash Bandicoot boss where you need to position yourself around the stage to make him throw scissors at ropes that make an anvil come down on its head. The problem is that unlike a boss in a Mario game, you aren’t locked to a 2D plane, but are still dealing with movement in 3D. This means you can still jump off the platform without meaning to, while projectiles are shooting all around you. There are also no health pickups in this boss fight, so if you inevitably lose, the boss fight immediately resets, giving the player far too little time to respond to the game-over and getting stuck in a pretty frustrating loop. The other bosses don’t fare too well either, with each having their own gimmick, but doing very little to justify the hardship you have to deal with as a player. They are just incredibly sudden difficulty spikes and while I am a seasoned player, I cannot fathom younger players enjoying these boss fights and not having a way to get past them to experience other levels.
I should clarify that I do not think that Clive ‘N Wrench is unplayable. The game is fine, but on Switch it looks really really bad. At times you could be mistaken that you’re watching an actual GameCube game, because of the stiff animation, the terrible draw distances in particular in the larger stages and the way models and lighting interact with one another. When I saw the first footage of the game in action a few years back, I was really impressed with the way it was turning out, but this Switch version is really a downgrade in almost every possible sense. The one thing I will say for it, is that the game runs at a stable frame-rate. Ignoring pop-in, animation, the lack of shadows, proper lighting and just very back looking character models, that is something going for it. Really, if you crave portability the game sure functions and may be fun for a few pick up and play sessions, but I think that this version doesn’t do any justice to the design and intent of Clive ‘N Wrench.
And I think that that is what stings the most. Because even while I felt mostly nothing while playing Clive ‘N Wrench, I did get a sense that this was truly a passion project from a single creator. This game is just the biggest swing and it’s a shame that it is mostly a miss. You can sense that there was so much care and design put into the game and its worlds. But it almost feels like it is cracking under its own weight from the very beginning. As if levels that were designed ten years ago are still part of this game, even though they fully exemplify why Clive ‘N Wrench is not a lot of fun to play. Worlds are either too big or too cramped. Characters are stuck in the same eternal loop while engaging with them in the level and show no growth. There’s no way to expand your moves and actions or any power ups to change up the gameplay. There’s a neat way to detect if you’re missing pocket watches, but there’s no reward in a level for finding them all, making them feel pointless. Clive ‘N Wrench attempts to revive the 3D platformer, but ultimately shows how the trappings of the genre made it die in the first place. All around while exploring levels, it feels like there is a lack of focus. A wish to perform like a jack of all trades, but ultimately barely mastering the fundamentals of proper movement in a 3D space. I do not think that this game is entirely bad or a complete mess, but it is the missed potential that stings. It is a plea to sometimes take a step back and fundamentally understand what your work should be about. Sure, there is enjoyment to be had, but much like a fast food meal I will not be thinking about Clive ‘n Wrench much in the future.
I don’t think I’ve seen a developer video as charming as the original preview for A Little to the Left, a puzzle game developed by Max Inferno. In the video the two developers of the game showcase their game and the household objects that inspired it. Of course,it also features their cat who has a prominent role in the game. The premise and trailer was absolutely excellent, which made it all the more disappointing that A Little to the Left left me feeling with very little by the end of its short runtime.
Little to the Left is designed around household objects that form little puzzles. For people that are obsessed with stuff like symmetrical shapes or fitting stuff neatly into boxes you will feel right at home. The puzzles don’t have a clear explanation or even a title to let you know what you need to do to find the solution. Sometimes it's a stack of books that you can move around until they are all neatly aligned, other times you have to fit all kinds of cutlery into a drawer by figuring out in which tray they are supposed to go. It makes for some incredibly creative puzzles that all have their roots in household objects, which makes them far more relatable than most puzzles in video games. I especially enjoyed that some puzzles can have multiple solutions. For example you can sort those books by their size and shape or you can arrange them by color. The game only rates you at the end of a puzzle by showing how many possible solutions there actually are, which makes going back and figuring out other solutions a lot of fun.
The big twist that A Little to the Left presents the player with is the cat that lives in the home where you are solving the puzzles. Sometimes when trying to solve certain puzzles the cat comes in and attempts to play with your puzzle objects. Whether it's grabbing a piece of the puzzle and dragging it away, or swiping its tail across the screen and messing up your attempted solution. This ‘hurdle’ is incredibly charming as well as frustrating. Seeing all your hard work being knocked over by a curious cat can be a little disheartening. Thankfully the effect is never too bothersome and random enough to not block every single puzzle.
As puzzles progress A Little to the Left becomes more and more abstract in its solutions and questions. The space of household objects changes to moving around planets and other high-concept materials. As much fun as this can be, this is kind of where my interest in the game started to wane. This also in part because the Nintendo Switch version of the game, especially in docked mode, controls rather awkwardly. You have to use a cursor or buttons to select objects before being able to move them around. It feels surprisingly cumbersome to drag and drop objects around, even when increasing the movement speed of the cursor. In handheld mode some of these problems are fixed due to the use of the touch screen, but any control that is tied to a gamepad just makes the game less fun to play. And while the puzzles are very creative, I was often relying a bit too much on the hint system to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. Some difficulty spikes are unexpected and the order of puzzles can feel a bit unbalanced. You’d think the harder puzzles would’ve been saved for later but they appear frequently early on in new chapters and formed some pretty hefty roadblocks until I decided to use the hint system.
Overall I found A Little to the Left to be enjoyable in the moment, but after playing I rarely have thought about the game since. The puzzles are very clever and the way they are seemingly integrated into real life objects and locations makes A Little to the Left stand out from many other puzzle games. It should be very accessible to people who do not play a lot of games, even though I felt that by the end that the game had run out of steam and felt a bit too abstract for its own good. While the Switch version performs fine enough, the controls did feel like a drag when using a gamepad, which caused me to play the game in handheld mode with touch screen controls. A Little to the Left has a clear and unique identity among other puzzle games and while it won’t last you an entire weekend there is enough here for those looking for a new type of puzzling challenge.
There's a word in Dutch that has no real translation into English. The word "Gezellig" could be described as 'having a good time', "cozy", or even "enjoyable". It means most of these things altogether, but is hard to explain in another language. You can say a lot of things about the new comedic indie game Once Upon A Jester. It's a short rhythm game, in which improv is the central theme. But above all I got the feeling that the development of the game and the team that worked on it was incredibly 'Gezellig'. While it may come across as clunky at times, there's so much heart and joy poured into this game that shouldn't be missed if you're looking for a truly wholesome experience.
In the game you play as Jester who, along with his best friend Sok, decides to participate in "The Royal Theatrical Spectacle". This contest, organized by Princess Kirstina, sees theater groups competing for 15 flower bouquets in three different towns in order to play a show for the king himself. Jester and Sok however see this as a great opportunity to steal the royal diamond, the most sparkly object in all the land. It's up to the player to perform improv shows based on themes that the townsfolk will enjoy that particular day. After designing a poster, you'll perform the show and have to participate in little rhythmic minigames to interact with Sok on stage.
The gameplay is admittedly very simple. You walk around town, talk to the inhabitants and learn more about what they want. It's these characters and writing that provides the incredible charm that makes Once Upon A Jester stand out so much. The dialogue ranges from puns, comments on the absurdity of the world as well as the changes that Jester and his friends go through on their journey. This makes every little background character super memorable from the walking tree Boom Stam looking for his roots, to the three little ice cream boys, the fisherman by the sea, Jan the Wizard, and Mayor Kletsmajoor. As you can tell by the names, these characters are very very Dutch and being a Dutchy myself, it was a joy to behold all the quirky little puns that the team translated into English as well as the design of the world. This includes town names like Dorp Town (Town Town), Woud Woods (Wood Woods) and Zeehaven Harbour (Seaharbour Harbour), plus other little details like characteristic Dutch lanterns and all of the background chatter during songs and the overworld.
Music is also such an important aspect of the game. At times it is almost akin to something like the animated show 'Over the Garden Wall', where characters burst out into short comedic songs about how they're feeling or what is happening. The dry and direct delivery of characters like Jester and Sok stands in stark contrast with the elaborate monologues which makes the world feel very abstract, but also welcoming and comfortable. This ties back masterfully into the feeling of actually performing improv theater. While there's only a handful of shows, the decisions you make along the way change the outcome of every performance. This makes the game feel surprisingly refreshing, even when putting on "Statue Sok" for the fourth time. The same can also be said for the voice acting. While the on-screen text is always perfectly readable, every character and interaction is fully voiced by the development team. You can often hear that the team went with the first take and if you ask me,it works great. You hear the laughter when lines are mispronounced or when particular accents or puns were voiced. It is almost as if you're in the room with the team and they’re making it up as they go along.
Seeing Dutch culture portrayed in (international) games is still a rarity but it was a joy to see how well Bonte Avond has transitioned Dutch culture and in particular its humor into an interactive title. The dry and direct responses from the characters are unmistakably Dutch. And yes, there’s obviously a personal connection between me and that particular topic. But even disregarding that, the game feels so honest and is super confident in what it is, similar to how an improv actor performs on stage. The game doesn't skip a beat in its short but sweet runtime and I think that makes for a genuine experience that I haven't had in quite some time. It may just be one of the best titles to play along with someone who isn't too familiar with games. The humor, low stakes and easy to understand gameplay makes for a great introduction into interactive media.
A small nitpick I have is that videos in the Switch version could be optimized just a little. The end credits and one great cut-away gag were undercut by choppy performance on the system. And while the replayability of the shows is pretty varied, I would have loved to see two more shows with some creative set-pieces.
Other than that, Once Upon A Jester feels absolutely gezellig. From the live-performed songs to the funny writing and memorable characters, Jester and Sok's journey is one I would heartily recommend and makes my Dutch heart incredibly proud.
I’ve been a lifelong LEGO fan for as long as I can remember. From the physical bricks to their admittedly mixed outings in video games, LEGO has survived for decades by being inventive and using strategic licenses. LEGO Builder’s Journey released last year and was a great little puzzle game that used the mechanics of LEGO pieces themselves to tell a simple and creative story. LEGO Bricktales is mechanically more complex, but feels like a close approximation of the inventiveness that LEGO is known for. For adults it might be a tad too repetitive, but if played alongside a younger family member, this game is just delightful.
In LEGO Bricktales, you control your custom made avatar who has visited his inventor grandpa. Due to several hijinks, he’s lost power to his theme park. It’s up to you to travel through his portal and visit several different worlds to obtain happiness crystals by helping out people in need. As you traverse various locations like a jungle and a desert, you come across people who need your creative building skills to help them out. Gameplay transitions between exploration segments, which are similar in design to Builder’s Journey, where you control the character through little LEGO dioramas. You can explore little caves or walk behind structures to find secrets and additional puzzles. Then there’s the puzzle segments, where you have to build structures from LEGO in any way you imagine.
Each structure you build in the puzzle segments is completely open to your own design. You start out a puzzle with a specific selection of bricks, but are free to stack, rotate or place them however you want as long as it is within the allocated building space. It could be as simple as recreating a statue, rebuilding a bridge or market stand, or even designing a colorful theme park attraction. In order to solve the puzzle, it needs to withstand a simulation test. A robot will attempt to cross the gaps using the bridge you created and that will provide feedback whether you need to tweak the design to withstand the weight or movement. A simple 2x4 bridge needs support in order to help the robot cross the gaps for instance; a zipline needs both to be in balance and have a little roof for the connection as well. Each puzzle builds, pun intended, on top of previous designs you’ve created. After the completion of a puzzle, you’re free to move on to creatively enhance your build by using any bricks you like. You can swap colors, add more creative components or fully design the puzzle however you want.
What I especially like about LEGO Bricktales is that it always makes you think of the physicality of the bricks themselves. You can stack on top of or underneath the bricks by positioning them most effectively. It’s a hard transition from a physical act, like connecting LEGO bricks, to a digital environment, but the folks over at ClockStone Software have done a marvelous job at recreating what it’s like to build to your heart's content as well as accounting for the way weight and movement would impact a build. This makes each puzzle feel quite unique, even though you will be designing quite a few bridges and connecting places.
I did find some of the toolkit a bit disorienting. While the controls work great most of the time, positioning a brick within the three-dimensional space can be quite a challenge. This is especially true if you start out with an easy build and have to redo certain parts because of the physics that impact it. Moving around bricks is easy enough and you can use the D-pad to connect bricks above or below a piece that’s already placed, but oftentimes, moving back and forth from the available pieces to the construction zone did get a bit tedious. I also felt that because the game doesn’t reward creativity, I found myself quickly making the fastest and easiest buildings, just to get from point A to B faster. The puzzles here can sometimes feel like a harsh break from the exploration segments in the game and made me want to breeze through them to go back to exploration. If you’re in a relaxed mood, the game accommodates this fairly well, but if you want to rush through the puzzles the pacing can work a bit against you.
Ultimately, while the core mechanics are as solid as the plastic the bricks are made of, the general presentation leaves a bit to be desired. From the surprisingly large number of textboxes to explain the dialogue, to the very boring UI and graphical interface, it feels like the game lacks a bit of polish. The LEGO aspect is absolutely on point with the dioramas using studs and flat pieces for some gorgeous designs in the various worlds, but this makes the UI stick out all the more. On Switch especially, it’s almost like you’re playing a game that’s designed for tablets and while the game runs great on the system, that makes the end product feel a little bit cheap and inconsistent at times. This goes for the music as well, which does a fine enough job to complement the settings and worlds, but leaves little impact on the overall experience.
That said, LEGO Bricktales is probably a fantastic game to play alongside younger players. For kids, the whimsical style of the characters and worlds would be a great introduction to puzzle games that encourage creativity, especially with a child’s excitement over going back to earlier builds and re-designing them to their heart’s content. While the normal LEGO games are all about action and cooperation, Bricktales’s focus on creativity and puzzle solving makes it feel more grounded than the fantastical LEGO Star Wars and Marvel games. This is a game anyone with an understanding of the toy can pick up and enjoy. While a more mature single player will probably not stick around too long, this is one that families will definitely appreciate on whatever platform they choose to play.
Youropa was revealed all the way back in August of 2019. The puzzle game was part of an Indie World presentation and I even got to play around with it at Gamescom that year. While attempting to tie together multiple unique ideas taken from a lot of inspirations, Youropa unfortunately didn’t manage to leave an impact on me. While its puzzles are inventive and it has an interesting aesthetic, the slow pace and progression make Youropa feel like it's at the end of its rope far too quickly.
I remember as a kid playing around with a toy that was a blank action figure that you could draw on top of using wipeable markers. In a sense, Youropa has a similar protagonist. You play as a nameless blank figure with a large head. At the beginning of the day Paris is upended by a gravity distorting event that leaves the city in floating disconnected pieces. It’s up to you to reconnect these floating pieces of the city and solve puzzles to provide them with power. The twist is that you can distort gravity by walking over rounded edges and slopes, which causes gravity to twist and turn with your perspective. The best shorthand for this is how you can walk on the edges of planetoids in Super Mario Galaxy to reach the bottom side of the same planet. However, when you step off a ledge, gravity returns to normal and you fall to your doom. Aside from this being the main mechanic, each district has its own set of puzzles and mechanics giving you new abilities to explore these floating rocks.
If you’re into physics based puzzle games like Portal, The Talos Principle or The Turing Test, Youropa is probably a game you’ll love playing around with. As much as most puzzles boil down to 'provide power to the switch‘ or ‘open a door by placing an object on a button’, the gravity-mechanic always feels engaging and required to solve these puzzles. Placing a box on a grounded floor and then walking up the same wall to grab that box from the wall to carry it upwards feels pretty inventive for a genre that tends to rely on performing the same task countless times before reaching the end.
But with Youropa its not the mechanics that start to wear thin but its lack of character and personality. The blank protagonist you play around with can be recolored using stickers, paint and all sorts of decorative items. But the character rarely feels like you. There’s an option to share creations online with other players, but even when finding these designs it never made me really connect with the world or its inhabitants. From the alien looking enemies that resemble dogs and giants to its floating levels that have great puzzles but become a slog to traverse. The movement is slow and this makes puzzles feel like they take far longer than they need to. Especially when more physics based puzzles come around the corner and you’re required to line up items with the right angle before kicking or tossing them across edges. The game also employs frequent game overs, meaning that you often have to restart levels when enemies push you off the edge and have to start at the last door you’ve accessed. It’s not bad per se, but it tended to wear me down quickly while playing the game.
What I did find interesting was the many hidden collectibles in each level and their unlocks. If you find three mixtapes in each level you get additional parts. These parts can be used in the custom level creator, which allows anyone to play around with building their own levels and sharing them online. It’s a surprisingly extensive level editor and there’s quite a bit of attention put into the learning of how you can combine and extend levels to create full worlds. It’s great that the game is about inspiring collaboration, sharing and creating a world together. But it wasn’t a particular aspect of the game that enticed me, mainly because I think most levels already do a great enough job of exploring the game’s mechanics and I didn’t feel like tossing my own head in the ring because of that sluggish pacing.
Thankfully the game runs good enough on Switch. While not a locked framerate, the game uses some nice shaders and lighting effects that make it stand out from the rest. It’s just a shame that your weird avatar will probably look very out of place among the photorealistic textures of Parisian streets and objects.
Youropa left me feeling quite ambivalent about the final product. As a puzzle game it has some clever mechanics and explores them with plenty of abilities to extend your playing experience for quite some time. However it must be said that this playtime feels extended by a sluggish pace that makes exploration and even some of the puzzle solving feel exhausting at times. The game runs good enough on Switch and for those who like trying their hand at creating games or levels of their own, Youropa has plenty to offer here. But if you’re looking for something with its own personality or a story that will keep you engaged while solving these puzzles, you’re going to have to pull some other strings.
It’s been a long three years, but finally Gamescom returned this year as an in-person event in Cologne, Germany. Gamescom is the largest gaming convention in the world. E3 may be catching the most eyeballs, but the sheer size and attendance of the event in Cologne blows it out of the water. Though the overall event was as much fun as it has always been, it did feel rather empty in comparison to previous years. Mostly due to some of the largest publishers deciding to not attend the event this year for various reasons. Sony, Activision-Blizzard, Square-Enix, EA and yes even Nintendo forgoed attending the event, which made a lot of smaller publishers and developers pick up the slack. Honestly, they did a fantastic job and while I haven’t played all these games on Switch hardware, I still wanted to share my overall impressions from seeing a ton of new games making their way (eventually) to the Nintendo Switch. The games below are listed in alphabetical order and will have a description of what system I played them on or was given a hands-off demo for. So come with me on my journey to Germany and let’s see what you need to look out for on Switch in the upcoming months.
Anger Foot - Hands-on Demo [PC]
Developers: Free Lives
Publisher: Devolver Digital
One Sentence Pitch: Hotline Miami in First-Person
Pounding beats, a maddening difficulty and an intensity that I don’t think was matched by anything else at Gamescom. Anger Foot is the next game from the team behind , Genital Jousting and Broforce. In Anger Foot you interact with the world by kicking everything in your path. From breaking down doors, to destroying enemies to cranking valves. The controls feel precise and responsive and each kick has a… well, kick to it. You make your way to the end of the level by killing all the enemies that stand in your way. The AI felt pretty merciless and will do anything to kill you. You can also pick up weapons to shoot with, or throw them to stun enemies. It really feels like playing a version of Hotline Miami in first-person. The world design is pretty colorful, with a lot of visual gags and unique enemy-designs. I will say that playing the demo did feel pretty exhausting after a while. You die in one hit, so the game truly becomes a matter of trial and error and knowing where enemies are located to optimize your run. It’s going to be fun to see the speedrunning community pick up this game and go nuts with it. While Anger Foot hasn’t been announced for Switch yet, it wouldn’t surprise me to see this game make the jump to the hybrid console. It would be kick-ass to play this on the go sometime in the future.
Backbeat - Hands-off Demo [PC]
Developers: Ichigoichie Inc.
Publisher:Ichigoichie Inc.
One Sentence Pitch: A musical puzzler that combines XCOM with timeline management.
If you have played Ichigoichie’s previous game Hexagroove Tactical DJ, you know that their knowledge and expertise lies in building on top of musical concepts. Using multiple musical systems that each impact one another and make you learn and perfect their mechanics. While Backbeat has a completely different approach than Hexagroove, it is still without a doubt an Ichigoichie game. Backbeat follows the story of Watts, who in 1995 decides to put together her own band to compete in a battle of the bands. The style is very pleasing and sees you controlling each character from an isometric point of view. The goal of each level is quite simple, move all the characters to the end goal and avoid being caught by guards. The trick is that these puzzles all follow the rules of the timeline in the top-left corner of the screen. Meaning you only have so many turns to move around and play each stage. Each character has their own movement pattern that impacts the puzzles. Some characters can move multiple squares, while others only move around once. Sometimes there are obstacles that need to be dealt with, by having a certain character control a gate or using their special ability to pass by guards. You may be wondering where the musical-aspect comes from then. The game is designed in such a way that the movement and direction of each character influences the music being played. This is also how you are graded at the end of a level. Making a turn at the right beat increases your score and actions. There’s a lot of mechanics and components going on at the same time, but whereas I was often getting confused by Hexagroove’s more intense mechanics and timing, Backbeat gives you time to think over your actions and rewind in case you want to try something else. This gives it a really unique vibe that is definitely something that puzzle and strategy-fans should keep their eye out for. In addition, the game’s soundtrack is killer with a lot of funk and jazz influences that use a live recording that makes the world and characters come alive. Also, be sure to check out their website if you want to relive that 90’s nostalgia the game is going for.
One Sentence Pitch: Feels right at home after the original.
I can be very blunt here. If you liked Coffee Talk, you’ll love Coffee Talk - Episode 2 without a doubt. The game has retained its visual novel-like structure with some refinements in the interactive elements and some new ingredients for the coffee bar. The writing is still excellent and the new characters I got to meet in this demo definitely made me very curious to see what else episode 2 has brewing. I really liked the interaction between Lucas the Faun and the Banshee Riona and it was great to see Jorji the officer return as well. The Switch version seemed to run quite well, although there was some noticeable stuttering during the serving of the drinks. Nothing a bit of optimization can’t fix and the game is still on track to release sometime in 2023. I’ve already put in my order and can’t wait to chug down this drink once it arrives.
Desta: The Memories Between - Hands-on demo [iOS]
Developers: UsTwo Games
Publisher: UsTwo Games/Netflix Games
One Sentence Pitch: A roguelike turn-based dodgeball game that is accessible for anyone.
I will immediately admit that the first reveal of Desta: The Memories Between did not grab me. There’s a legacy behind UsTwo Games (creators of Alba: A Wildlife Adventure and more notably Monument Valley), but that first trailer just did very little for me to explain what the game was about. Thankfully after getting hands on with the game for a good twenty minutes I am happy to report that I have come around on this opinion and Desta is shaping up to be something really unique. In this game you traverse different dreams, in which you choose different characters to play a game of magical dodgeball. The game uses a turn-based combat system where each character can perform multiple actions and uses their own special abilities to control and fire the dodgeball. Just like in actual dodgeball, the goal is to hit your opponents with the ball. Trick-shows are definitely encouraged and the way in which the systems build on top of one another is very impressive. Desta’s ability allows them, for example, to gain an additional action if they end their turn holding the ball. But there’s also a character like Jack, who can teleport across the map at the cost of two action points. I also like how the shooting of the ball is an actual mechanic. On the tablet I played I needed to pull back the ball like a slingshot and fire it at the opponent. It gives you very precise control of the ball and I can see how this encourages multiple styles of play. While I didn’t get too much of a feel for the story, it is definitely heavy on the narrative as the characters you meet during the day, will later show up in Desta’s dreams as playable characters. Finally the soft colors and cell-shaded look makes the game a joy to look at as well. Not too surprising from the team behind Monument Valley, but moving the camera around and finding the optimal dodgeball angle never felt boring or repetitive. The game comes to Netflix Games first later in the year, so if you happen to have a Netflix Subscription, you can definitely give the game a spin there first. The Switch version will follow at some point in the future.
Figment 2: Creed Valley - Hands-On demo [PC]
Developers: Bedtime Digital Games
Publisher: Bedtime Digital Games
One Sentence Pitch: A Narrative action-puzzler with some catchy tunes.
While I haven’t played the original Figment, this demo grabbed my attention with its beautiful art-design. You play as Dusty as you run around in a world that’s designed after the human mind. In a similar way to something like Psychonauts, you deal with several mental issues plaguing the mind. From somber thoughts that creep up and block paths, to manifestations that hurt the mind in more proactive ways. In the demo I was chasing around a large swine that was causing harm. The only method of defeating it was luring it into the lights that would cause it to transform back into a little piglet. The main gameplay combines combat and puzzle solving and the developers mention that it is a great game for parents to play with their children. The puzzles in the demo weren’t too challenging, but for a younger player it will definitely be enticing. The game also features a companion system, similar to the two-player mode in Super Mario Odyssey, where one player controls Dusty and the other controls Piper, a flying friend that can help the player at any time. Most impressive was the boss battle and sound design, something that feels akin to musical bosses from something like Mario + Rabbids or Conker’s Bad Fur Day. This game is certainly something to look forward to if you want a more straightforward action-adventure game that heavily relies on its music and design.
Gori: Cuddly Carnage - Hands-on Demo [PC]
Developers: Angry Demon Studio
Publisher: Wired Productions
One Sentence Pitch: What if Devil May Cry and Tony Hawk Pro Skater had a furry baby together?
All things considered, Gori: Cuddly Carnage was the biggest surprise of the show for me. Especially funny after the release of Stray earlier this year, Gori sees you playing as the titular character. A cat using a transforming hoverboard that is equipped with blades and swords. Traveling through Neon-lit cities and sequences, you fight all sorts of bizarre monsters in a world that hasn’t been too kind to humans. In this demo I was mostly chasing a nightmarish creature that was sending waves of unicorns to stop me. The game is a third person action game in which movement just feels incredibly satisfying. From grinding on rails of light, to wallrunning against neon billboards to just using the dashes and jumps to clear gaps, the game feels super tight to play. At times it feels like a proper 3D Sonic game that isn’t hampered down by the need to move at blistering speeds. This also allows combat to flow a bit more naturally. Though I did find some of the enemy encounters a tad too repetitive, the overall style and methods in which you can dispose of enemies feels fantastic. Especially once you throw upgrades into the mix like the use of a shield, ranged attacks and parries. The game is surprisingly violent, so don’t let its cute exterior knock you off guard. Playing Gori was just a great time. My one reservation is to see how this game will perform when it makes its way to Switch. One of the developers was definitely hesitant, since the Switch version will require quite a few compromises. But don’t let that get you down. If you’re into 3D action games don’t let Gori skate you by!
Jackbox Party Pack 9 - Hands-on Demo [PC]
Developers:Jackbox Games
Publisher:Jackbox Games
One Sentence Pitch:More games, a good pack, you know what to expect.
I don’t think I need to explain to anyone what the Jackbox Party Pack is. These collections of varied party games that can be played with anyone via online devices have been a staple of gaming streamers for years now. The 9th edition of the party pack comes with five new games, including the 4th version of one of the most popular games, Fibbage. While we were given explanations for all the five games, I ended up getting a full hands-on playthrough of one of the five games. There’s definitely a nice balance of creativity and ingenuity on display here. From Roomerang, in which you play a reality TV show and try to stay in the game for as long as possible. Junktopia, which sees you trying to sell all sorts of unique items by giving the item an elaborate backstory and history and thereby increasing its (perceived) value. Quixort, which is a trivia game meets tetris, in which you need to stack the falling answers in a particular order based on a particular prompt. And finally there’s the fourth iteration of Fibbage that has gotten a batch of new questions, prompts, final fibbage options and even fan-submitted questions.
The one I got extensive time with was a game called nonsensory, which combines both drawing, writing prompts and guessing games. Each player gets a prompt and has to write a sentence or make a drawing based on a percentage that is attached to the prompt. For example “a sentence that has a 70% chance of being in a James Bond movie” or “A person that is 90% exhausted.”. After writing or drawing the prompts, the other players have to bet on the percentage that was attached to the prompt. Players are able to double down on their bets which can lead to a massive lead in points or losing all the advantage they’ve had up until that point. I found the ruleset of Nonsensory to be pretty easy to understand, which is what I think makes a great Jackbox Games. The overall variety of the pack seems pretty impressive as well and I’m especially looking forward to trying out Roomerang and Junktopia. This party pack also features some new quality of life changes like localization for German, French, Spanish and Portuguese (with some prompts being changed to fit their respective markets) as well as a new safe streamer mode, in which streamers are able to kick players. As well as an expanded audience of 10.000 participants. The game launches simultaneously on all platforms later this year and should be something for streamers to look forward to!
Please, Touch the Artwork - Hands-on Demo [PC]
Developers:Thomas Waterzooi
Publisher:Thomas Waterzooi
One Sentence Pitch:Varied puzzles that make you believe Mondriaan would’ve been a fun game designer.
This game actually released this week on Switch, so can try it right away with a free demo! Please, Touch the Artwork, tells its story using different types of art that resemble the works of famed Dutch artist Piet Mondriaan. Most well known for his work Boogie-Woogie and the use of straight lines and primary colors. The game takes an unique approach and creates three different types of puzzles from these concepts. Some mean coloring in different panels, others are guiding cubes to a specific goal and yet others see you tracing lines across the artwork. It feels like a very fresh puzzle experience that should be approachable for all ages. Due to its style it definitely stands out from other puzzle games and feels like a perfect harmony between design and visual presentation. The one downside is that I’ll never be able to look at a Mondriaan painting in the same way ever again.
The last case of Benedict Fox - Hands-on Demo [PC]
Developers:: Plot Twist
Publisher: Rogue Games inc.
One Sentence Pitch: What if we put investigative detective work in a Metroidvania?
I really just want to quickly shout out The Last Case of Benedict Fox in general. While it isn’t coming to Switch (yet?) this game is absolutely one to keep in mind if you’re a fan of Metroidvania games with a dark twist. You play as Benedict Fox and are exploring the research of his late father in a dark and twisted world. The game is a 2D platformer that visually reminded me of Ori and the Will of the Wisps, crossed with a cinematic platformer like Another World. Thankfully the game has a high speed and combat feels crunchy. You can stab with a knife, or fire off a single bullet from your gun. All the while you collect energy and ink to enhance your powers via a tattoo that you can upgrade back at a manor hub world. All the while you collect clues in the world about what happened to your father and why his history with Benedict is so fraught. This game really caught me by surprise and while it’s coming out on Xbox Game Pass next spring, it is certainly one to look out for. Who knows, it may even make the jump to Switch at some point in the future.
The Last Worker- Hands-On Demo [Switch]
Developers: Oiffy, Wolf & Wood Interactive
Publisher: Wired Productions
One Sentence Pitch:An all-star cast for a first person narrative driven game that definitely a-political./p>
I think what sets The Last Worker apart from much else is that this is the first time I’ve heard about a game that was fully designed to work flawlessly in VR and then ported to the Nintendo Switch. As the developer told me as I was playing the demo: “I figured if it has to work on a VR-headset for two screens rendering at 1440p, then it must be easy to run on a single screen at 1080p.”. Honestly he was not wrong. The Last Worker sees you as the last warehouse worker in a not-so-dystopian future working for the Jüngle company. Any resemblance to existing names or people is totally coincidental, the developer assured me. The game sees you moving boxes while being guided by a little robot called Skew (voiced by the legendary Jason Isaacs). Unfortunately a big event like Gamescom isn’t always the best moment to truly get a feel for a sober narrative driven experience, but the design and mood of the world was immediately noticeable. Its cartoony cell-shaded style gives the Last Worker a lot of personality. Both in its character design as well as the way in which you interact with the world. You control the game by flying around in a small hovercraft-like unit, where you have to avoid machinery and safely deliver packages from the warehouse to the consumer. The story is really shaping up to be something unique with performances from Zelda Williams, Olafur Darri Olafsson and David Hewlett. If you’re into proper narrative games and are looking for one that is actually fully optimized for Switch, then The Last Worker should definitely be on your wishlist!
SCHiM - Hands-on Demo [PC]
Developers: Ewoud van der Werf
Publisher: Extra Nice
One Sentence Pitch: A cute shadowy blob that makes its way through a wholesome Dutch world.
Am I biased when it comes to talking about SCHiM? Yes. As much as I’d like to avoid it, SCHiM just ticks a lot of personal boxes for me. What started out as a graduation project, turned into a worldwide sensation with multiple trailers being picked up for several major showcases and the game even being part of the 30-game selection of next week’s Tokyo Game Show. But even with all the hype, I hadn’t had a chance to sit down and play the game myself. SCHiM sees you controlling a small little shadow blob that could’ve come straight out of a Studio Ghibli Film making its way across all sorts of environments. From busy streets, to a small park, alongside canals to a bus stop. Your goal is quite simple, to reunite objects with their shadows and use that to travel further and find your own human that has lost his shadow. The best way to describe gameplay is as if Untitled Goose Game was a 2.5D platformer. You view the game from an isometric perspective and can move only between shadows. If you ever miss a jump you’ll be reset to the last shadow you inhabited. This makes the game very accessible and allows for lots of interactions with the objects. From making bike bells ring to launching yourself via the shadow of a billboard on springs. The inventive ways in which you move about and around in the world was a joy from beginning to end even though the demo only lasted a short while. SCHiM is a game to look out for and something that may work as a great stepping stone for introducing family and friends to videogames.There’s no better definition of the term wholesome than seeing SCHiM in action.
Sonic Frontiers - Hands-On Demo [PC] (Only fifteen minutes)
Developers: Sonic Team
Publisher:SEGA
One Sentence Pitch: Sonic Team attempts to reinvent the franchise for the…. Fourth time?
I went to the SEGA booth every day to request permission to play the extended demo for Sonic Frontiers. But every day they were unfortunately fully booked. I had honestly given up hope, until a friend of mine told me that the TikTok booth of all places had a demo for Sonic Frontiers playable on the show floor. Now for those unfamiliar with GamesCom, the public show floor is always crowded beyond belief with long lines of people wanting to play the latest games. As someone from the press, we tend to make appointments beforehand in the business area, so that we can play these demo’s in peace and maybe even talk to a developer. But for Sonic Frontiers I made my way to the TikTok Public Booth, stood in line ( for admittedly a relatively short time) and got my hands on a PC demo of Sonic Frontiers. While the story completely washed past me (Sonic waking up in a weird glitching world while being watched by a strange being and him being guided by a mysterious voice) I held my breath as I gained control over the Blue Hedgehog and started running.
And I didn’t hate it.
Now, to judge this demo based on the ten to fifteen minutes I got to play around with it before a TikTok Staff Member told me to make room for new players is not exactly representative. Many other people I talked to, who did stand in line for over an hour to play the same demo at the SEGA booth for an extended period of time, had a far worse time with this demo. My expectations were pretty abysmal to be honest but I still felt that I wanted to see how Sonic Team wants to present this reinvention of the franchise.
Let’s begin with the obvious and most notable aspect. Even on this PC build of the game, it looked absolutely awful. You’ve probably seen some fanprojects of a Sonic game built in the Unreal Engine that are probably looking better than this. Frequent pop-in, terrible use of shaders and visual effects made Sonic Frontier immediately look off. Even during the cutscenes it was shocking to see how bad the game was looking on PC. Especially for a game that will be releasing on both the last generation and the current generation of hardware. This has made me very curious about the performance of the Switch version, but we’ll get there when we get there.
So while the graphical design and visual pop-in didn’t make a good case for the game, the gameplay itself I actually found pretty enjoyable. The sense of speed in a Sonic game hasn’t felt this good since something like Unleashed. The wide open areas of the overworld make traversal quite fun, especially with a lot of interactive objects like grind rails, bumpers and boosters. The fact that you aren’t restricted by the linearity of a level design or the sluggishness of a Sonic hub world is rather refreshing. Quests and objectives work in a similar way, while some are rather straightforward, you can find items scattered around the open world and use those to unlock additional levels (like the subspace ones you’ve probably seen of Green Hill Zone). While the puzzles never required too much brainspace on my end, I did like the incorporation of the new trail mechanic. Unlocked via the skill tree, yes there’s an actual skill tree in this game, you can hold down the Y button at any time to have a blue streak follow Sonic’s footsteps. This can be used to draw circles around enemies and objects, sort of similar to the approach in Pokémon Ranger. When encircled, Sonic dashes towards the enemy and deals a good amount of damage and can even stun opponents. While the mechanic seems to have many uses and has to be incorporated in puzzles as well, it feels like an interesting method to spice up Sonic’s general moveset. I can see how this may be a choice to influence the next decade of Sonic titles and so far, if you ask me it has potential.
Another thing that surprised me was combat. The first footage released by IGN of Sonic Frontiers made the combat feel slow and sluggish. Especially when dealing with minor enemies seemed to take an absurdly long time. But it seemed that during this demo defeating enemies was much more doable. I really enjoyed the ways in which Sonic can engage with combat during the demo. From dealing regular kicks and punches, to using that streak ability to stun the opponent, to actively dodging out of the way of an attack by hitting the RB button and then using that opening to deal massive damage. It maybe isn’t as instant as his old Homing Attack, but it does feel weighty and make enemies a more formidable obstacle in an open world where running around them is also a valid option at all times.
What stood out to me most at the end of my time with this demo is that Sonic Frontiers still feels and plays like a modern 3D Sonic game. Whether that is something you enjoy is definitely subject to opinion and taste. As someone who has enjoyed quite a few of the 3D outings, especially around the Unleashed and Generations eras, this clicked with me immediately. The open world is something that needs to be experienced for a longer time to fully judge, but for now it feels like a right fit for Sonic. Now whether this game will run well enough on Switch is a matter of waiting till we see it in action on the go, but hey, if Mario, Zelda and Kirby can do it, Sonic shouldn’t have a hard time with this right? Right…?
And that’s all that I’ve been able to play around with during Gamescom. I’d like to thank the individual publishers and developers for being so gracious with their time and letting me play and experience their games. We should definitely hear more about these games as we get closer to their release date. Let us know which one of these seemed most interesting to you in the comments!
It’s not an understatement to say that the Pokémon franchise is huge. But I think that just reporting on the number of sales the video games, trading cards and boatloads of merchandise have made only paints half a picture. You’ve likely seen comments from Pokémon fans online in the past regarding an announcement, or you’ve almost certainly come across people in your city playing Pokémon GO. Heck, you may even have participated in gifting Pokémon cards or opening packs with friends or family. All of these aspects shape the Pokémon community, but it was last weekend at the Pokémon World Championship (Hereafter “Worlds”) in London that I truly came to understand what drives so many players, enthusiasts and die-hard fans towards this franchise. It’s an event so enormous in scope and size that at first I found myself struggling to understand what made it so special and by the end found myself more ingrained with Pokémon than ever before.
On paper, Worlds is pretty easy to understand, yet explaining it to people unfamiliar with what that all entails was something to behold. I first got a taste of this right before I boarded my plane to London and the military police asked me what I was going to do in London.
Me, being slightly hesitant: “I’m going to the Pokémon World Championship.”Him: “Wait, the Pokémon Championships? What do they play? The card game?”Me: “No, they play everything. From GO, to the card game, to the video game and everything in between,” expecting him to roll his eyes and handing me back my passport. (To my surprise) Him: “Oh man, that’s so awesome. Hope you’ll have a great time there!”
It’s kind of weird in hindsight that I still managed to underestimate people’s general connection to Pokémon as a brand. Sure, we’ve just celebrated the series' 25th anniversary, but at times it still feels like it could slip back into this obscure corner of pop-culture. I’m confident that the brand is strong enough to easily last another twenty five years, but being recognized and actively being understood are two major different things. While I doubt this military police officer would’ve known of my favorite Pokémon (Excadrill), the fact he immediately latched onto the idea of a Pokémon World Championship is truly something that I’ve rarely come across. And this was even before I boarded the plane and ended up entering a truly incredible event.
What makes Worlds so distinct from a traditional convention or gaming event is that the shared connection with all other attendants is immediately noticeable. While some only came for the exclusive Pokémon Center, with walkways upon walkways of exclusive and pricey merchandise, most were there to actively enjoy the activities being held: from participating in the fun Play Lab, where you could learn how to play the Trading Card Game (TCG), to exclusive Pokémon GO stops and events to capture rare event and legendary Pokémon. Even the Nintendo Switch demo units that only carried Pokémon Legends: Arceus were always busy. Plenty of times I spotted parents reconnecting with Pokémon for the first time in twenty years after being spurred on by their own kids. I cannot begin to describe how it feels to grow up alongside a generation of games and see them being passed onto the next generation of players. Sure it made me feel like I had instantly aged, but once that shock passed it was heartwarming to see.
This is where I especially need to shout out the fantastic organization and decoration of the event. From the phenomenal Pokémon Center, fully themed after London’s highlights in both the store itself as well as the merchandise, to the hallways plastered with enormous banners featuring all sorts of Pokémon. The energy was simply electric, and the staff was very helpful the entire event. The main stage was without a doubt the highlight—Not only featuring some elaborate set-design like two double-decker buses and gigantic decorative pieces, but the seating and view for the audience was great, too. The opening ceremony in particular managed to take advantage of this. Ishihara-San may have opened the event, but it truly erupted once a promotional video started playing that showed Pachirisu facing off against Garchomp, Salamence and Tyranitar. A fantastic nod to the fans and the VGC Masters finals of 2014. It came across as inspiring. During the event, I met a friend of mine, Christiaan Smit, who had qualified for the TCG championships for the very first time after participating in regional tournaments during the entire season. That opening ceremony in particular made him really feel part of the event and the community as a whole:
“There was something about that video that made me tear up. Seeing all those previous champions in that video receiving their trophies and knowing that there was a chance I could be one of them.”
Fantastic opening video produced to kick off the world championship. You can tell the audience is excited. pic.twitter.com/AyYWu3aYjk
That fierce hope and participation was noticeable in nearly every event I managed to see. I was in awe of the truly surprising intensity during the Pokémon GO matches to the more traditional Fighting Game scene that was shown surrounding Pokkén Tournament, going out on one last absolute bang. And while the TCG and VGC competitions were engaging during all the different divisions (junior, senior and masters), I think that just seeing so many people coming together to celebrate Pokémon in so many forms is what I will take with me at the end of the day. The side-events especially showcased this. Specifically, I admired the fun outdoor area called Pokémon Worlds Square, where I met a dancing Pikachu and Eevee and got some refreshing Boba Tea and the London Cable Car that goes over the Thames, which was completely overtaken by Pokémon stickers and each carriage representing a different Pokémon typing. You could simply feel that the love for all things Pokémon was what drove this event, which made it especially interesting, considering that this would be the only outing of the eighth generation during a world championship.
It’s hard to avoid the topic of controversy when talking about Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield. I think that most players during their playtime with the game felt that there was something lacking, be that the initial post-game, the design of the Galar Region or the decision to remove the National Dex. We’ve probably all seen someone online in a comment section, twitter or reddit thread make a stink about how “Pokémon is ruined forever.” And while I am certain that there were players in the audience or participating groups thinking that, it was so refreshing to be reminded that Pokémon fans in general are actually pretty chill. Sword and Shield never got their time in the limelight from a competitive perspective due to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, so seeing these participants still giving it their all was something that I desperately needed. Not only because I found my own interest in Pokémon waning a bit over the last few years, but also because I once aspired to participate in competitive VGC as well. Seeing people performing at this level was inspiring on a level I hadn’t considered before. Yes, watching the event online can give you the same type of satisfaction, but being part of this massive audience while cheering and enjoying all things Pokémon is something that you really need to feel for yourself.
Pokémon Sword and Shield definitely went out with a bang at their only Pokémon Worlds showing. And while it was a joy to watch this generation of Pokémon come to a close, you could feel everywhere that excitement was brewing for Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet. Not only because the event was completely focused on the eighth generation of games with barely any reference to Scarlet and Violet outside one photo stand and caps for the new starters, but also because the show literally opened withIshihara stating that a new trailer would be shown during the closing ceremony of Worlds alongside other announcements. Perhaps it was the energy that you could feel during the entire event, but there was so much excitement leading up to the showcase of what was next for the upcoming generation of Pokémon. If you ask me, Game Freak and the Pokémon Company absolutely delivered.
I believe that with this next generation, Game Freak is really giving it their all in pleasing as many parts of the different fanbases as possible. Funnily enough, I think that it wasn’t the new Scarlet and Violet trailer that showed this, but the Pokémon Trading Card Game announcement in particular with the return of EX-cards. I’m not an expert on the TCG, but EX-cards were very well received by the player base during the third generation when they were introduced. By announcing the return of these fan-favorite mechanics and emphasizing that this is to introduce more diversity in the selection of Pokémon and the line-up, it sets up that the creativity of players is the main focus for the next generation of playing the Trading Card Game. On top of that, the new trailer for Scarlet and Violet focused in particular on the new battle items and the effects the new Terastalizing mechanic will have on competitive battling. It makes me very excited to see how players will use these mechanics to create their own truly unique teams. Announcements like these aren’t just made for marketing purposes, though they serve that purpose as well of course; they show good faith towards the most die-hard of players. Not the screaming commenters underneath every YouTube-video, but the ones that actively seek out these events to connect and compete with each other.
As I was boarding my plane back home I realized that Pokémon Worlds had not only given me hope for the future of Pokémon, but instilled a spark of hope inside me. Even if Scarlet and Violet happen to be a disappointment, even if the final evolutions of the starter pokémon will be bipedal humanoid creatures and even if the online commenters lose their minds again because a tree doesn’t have the proper shading, it doesn’t matter to me. Because I know that at the end of the day, the people I’ve seen participating and coming out to events like this are the true reason why I am still enjoying Pokémon after twenty five years. It is the drive to become a better person by being open to learning from others and sharing these moments of joy with strangers. Even while I don’t know them and possibly may never agree with them, we can still have these moments where seeing a Pachirisu facing off against a Salamence makes us explode with emotion.
Of course I had to pass the military police again during my passport check back to the Netherlands.
Him: “Where did you come from?”Me: “I went to London for the Pokémon World Championships.”Him: “Oh really? There’s World Championships in Pokémon? Did you compete?”Me: “No I didn’t, I just really got to report on it and enjoy the tournament.”Him: “Ah, that must’ve been awesome.”
Reviewer's note: In the interest of accurately representing the complete game, I have chosen to post this review unscored until I have been able to see more of the world and advanced gameplay. I would like to mention that I do feel confident in recommending Coromon at this time on Switch.
I was about eight years old when I discovered Pokémon ROM hacks. The one that had me absolutely hooked was a modified version of Pokémon Emerald called Pokémon Quartz. This game had its own Pokémon designs and a far more in-depth story than anything presented in Game Freak’s original. As a kid, I was stunned by how well these creators had understood Pokémon and gave it their own spin. Of course, in hindsight, putting your own original creations in the world of Pokémon really isn’t that high a bar. And I think the creators of Coromon have realized this. You might mistake this as a simple Pokémon clone, but based on my time with the game so far, I’ve been really impressed with how Coromon differentiates itself from what came before. It may just be the Pokémon experience you’ve been looking for, if you’re hankering for the more traditional style of the early generations.
So yes, on paper Coromon is almost comically a knock-off of Pokémon. You’re an adolescent leaving home to explore his country in search of mysterious creatures with their own elemental typings and you use your own monsters to battle them and other trainers. The details may be different, instead of balls you throw spinners at wild Coromon and you’re actually a researcher gathering data for a tech company, not trying to be the very best like no one ever was. But I was struck by how fresh the world and design of Coromon feels. It makes some dedicated efforts to invite comparison, but also shows how Coromon tries to bring its own ideas to the table.
Let’s begin with the Coromon themselves. Sure you have your starter Coromon, which is neatly part of an elemental triangle and there’s plenty of bug, snake and dog-like Coromon walking about. But overall their designs are very creative and expressive. I was almost immediately reminded of Pokémon Black and White and the fifth generation’s approach to its world and creatures. They all share a certain familiarity with Pokémon that came before, but each has their own unique twist with regards to their design. What separates Coromon, however, is the way the creatures are trained and leveled. Coromon are designated as having three different classes called “potential,” ranging from Standard to Superior to Perfect. Not only are the differences visible, but superior Coromon also have a different color palette compared to their standard variants; superior and perfect Coromon improve their potential much faster, too. Potential is a separate bar from the experience bar that can level up individually. Once it maxes out, you are free to distribute additional stat points to your Coromon. Superior Coromon max out their potential bar faster and Perfect Coromon even more so.
This gives a player so much customization as to how they want to raise their Coromon. Do you want to immediately invest the additional stat-points into the highest base stats? Or do you want to experiment and add higher speed to tank-like Coromon? I really like this system because it helps your Coromon grow, even when they haven't necessarily reached a high level. I found a superior Mino (A boar with flaming manes) early on and it quickly became one of my hardest hitting creatures, but I could mitigate its base stats that designate it a glass cannon by giving it higher points in defense when it reached its potential.
The typings in Coromon are also very different. There’s seven base typings that work differently than in the Pokémon series (for instance, Ice here is very effective against water), but aside from the typings there are also Skills. These correspond to specific attacks and have no relation to the typing of the Coromon. For example, poison isn’t a type a Coromon can have, but it is a type of attack that can be used against a normal-type Coromon for massive damage. It’s a bit of a hassle to get your mind around at first, but it gives the combat system some depth and variety that can’t be found in the Pokémon series.
The general story so far has been quite alright. Coromon doesn’t seem to actively go against the family-friendly vibe of the Pokémon series with adult or dark themes, but the writing does come across as being less talked down to. While I tend to find myself rather bored with talking to NPCs and characters in the main Pokémon series, in Coromon I found the writing to be more engaging and enjoyable. It may lean a tad too heavily on the referential humor, but it thankfully hasn’t overshadowed the core experience quite yet.
What I am a particular fan of is the brilliant pixel-art on display here. From the colorful towns and routes to the animation of the Coromon themselves, it is absolutely stellar. Especially when you reach areas beyond the starting forest, the developers definitely flex their animation and art skills. This is even more true when you unlock more capabilities for your gauntlet (this game’s version of the Pokédex / Catching machine / HMs) like pushing or burning objects. It makes you feel very engaged in the world, especially because each Coromon has its own unique overworld sprite as well. While the creatures don’t follow you around like in Pokémon Yellow or HeartGold, seeing them come alive in the overworld is a great touch at making them feel part of the world they inhabit, which is something I haven’t seen that much of in other Pokémon-like games.
There are a few minor gripes I have with Coromon. While you can adjust your controller inputs for the game, I was kind of annoyed that the + button is assigned to the menu and not the X-button. I know this is probably because you have more interactions within the overworld, but it has caused me numerous misclicks when I wanted to open the menu. Some UI elements I’m not a fan of as well. For instance, the way you have to individually select items for healing: when doing so, your first Coromon in the party is always selected instead of the one that needs a recovery item. I also think that the way the typings and skills are taught could use a bit more in-depth explanation. There are easily accessible manuals on most topics in the inventory, but it did take me quite some time to learn the mechanics and how to optimize a team.
I have not been able to finish Coromon since I received the review code. But from what I’ve played so far, I’ve been very impressed. From these 8 hours, I think that the world and creatures feel distinct from the games that inspired and it left me with an excitement that I haven’t felt since Pokémon Black and White. Not only the unique designs of the Coromon themselves, but mechanics like the potential-system and the way typings and skills work together sets Coromon apart from a simple ROM hack. There’s also a large selection of difficulty options that can be adjusted to make the game play more like a Nuzlocke or an easy mode; you can even actually catch opponents’ Coromon. The variety on display here is fantastic, so if you’ve been disappointed with recent Pokémon generations and are looking for a game that’s similar but has its own identity, Coromon is absolutely worth checking out.
I like to think of myself as an optimist. Especially when it comes to the capabilities of the Nintendo Switch. Yes, we’ve been playing with the system for over five years at this point, but looking at its output, it is still incredible that the core hardware has held up for as long as it has. Looking at ports like Ghostrunner, DOOM Eternal and especially Nintendo’s first party output on the system, the Switch is still more enticing to me than similar portable handheld devices. That being said, the cracks have become more apparent, especially for the last year or so. However, it is notable that XEL is absolutely one of the worst performing games I’ve seen on the Switch over the last five years. Releasing the game in this state, with quite a bit of marketing behind it, is a real shame and frankly should probably not have passed the quality assurance.
XEL opens quickly and sees the protagonist crash landing her spaceship on a mysterious planet. Unfortunately, the crash causes her to lose her memories of who she is and where she is, while also seemingly putting a rock in her forehead. Accompanied by a strange robot, she sets out to explore the planet and find out what XEL exactly is. From there on out, you find weird robots all over the place, and a colony of humans who are fighting against mysterious others. All the while you are searching for ways to repair your ship and save the colony. The game is presented as being clearly inspired by The Legend of Zelda games and is an action-adventure game.
I may be cutting this explanation short a bit, but that’s because I found the general conceit of XEL to be quite boring and lackluster. You have a sword and shield with which you can fight enemies. There are clearly marked dungeons that reward you with key items needed to progress, and there’s a roll button with a stamina meter. But whereas the landscapes and design of Hyrule evoke mystery and exploration, XEL sees you walking down a lot of linear hallways, beating up slow enemies, and having quite a bit of downtime during play. The exploration here rarely feels rewarding. From “hidden‘ audio logs to additional components used for improving gear and crafting items, I found myself quickly just passing all the additional stuff up to get the game done and over with. None of the characters feel engaging or well written enough to be fully invested in. And while a Zelda game also rarely has “well written characters,” XEL really wants you to connect with the mysteries and how these people are dealing with their life on this planet.
Unfortunately, most of what I can praise about the worldbuilding and the gameplay in XEL is that the general aesthetics of the game are pleasing. That’s about where this ends for me, because the Switch version is absolutely atrocious. Not only are we talking about horrendous frame-rates that I’d say drop below the double digits, but pop-in is a constant part of the journey. Oftentimes during play, edges of the world would simply vanish or pop-out or in without any sort of transition. In the colonized area of the world, the game would become nearly unplayable, with not only sluggish frame-rates and pop-in, but unresponsive controls as well. Going in for a quest and talking with villagers became a literal chore as the game was doing its hardest to keep up. Say what you will about other maligned Switch ports like the original release of Cloudpunk, as much as that game dropped on the visual aspect, it was at least performing semi-consistently. With XEL you run the risk of being unable to play it without any notice. All the while the game barely comes across as graphically demanding on the hardware. How can it be that other, high-effort indie games manage to run at a consistent 1080 and 30fps, but XEL is struggling to reach even half of those numbers?
And ultimately that’s where XEL fails hardest of all. It doesn’t differentiate itself enough from the other indie Zelda-like games that are available on Switch from a gameplay perspective. Titles like Death’s Door, Cross Code, and Blossom Tales offer a much more refined and unique take on the ideas Zelda is known for and run fantastic on Switch. XEL has little character to enjoy, there’s no story to keep you fully engaged, and gameplay feels contrived and repetitive. And that’s before we get to the frankly abysmal state that this game was released in. I was holding off this review to see if the game would be updated before its release, but quite frankly it seems that updating and fine tuning XEL will be an effort that I personally don’t think is worth it.
The original pitch for Firegirl: Hack ‘N Splash really caught my attention. Over the years there have been some firefighting games, but the set-up of presenting firefighting as a platforming roguelite seemed very inspired. Unfortunately after spending quite some time with Firegirl I have to say that the flame for this title has quickly dwindled and that it’s hard to recommend to fans of either platformers or roguelites. In case of fire I’d definitely leave this game behind.
As Firegirl, the daughter of a once great firefighter and new to the force, you are tasked with dowsing countless fires that have sprung up in the city. At first it may seem like random incidents happening all over town, but not long after it's discovered that someone has been using fire tomes to reawaken an ancient pagan god called the Firelord and is actively using the fire to burn down the city. It’s up to firegirl to not only rescue as many citizens as possible, but also help to restore the city funds to improve the fire station and figure out who is trying to summon the Firelord. It’s a simple story and anyone who’s ever read a story before will know where the game is headed, but it serves its purpose just fine.
Like I mentioned before, Firegirl is set up as a roguelite metroidvania. You race through burning buildings, fighting the fiery spirits that are destroying it while trying to rescue as many civilians and animals as possible. With your axe you are able to destroy debris and doors that block your paths, but your main method of fighting the fire is using your hose. By shooting water you can of course destroy flames, but it’s also a method of movement. By jumping and shooting the water below you can use the pressure to rocket yourself up to higher levels of the destroyed buildings. All of this becomes a race against time where you try to find the civilians before the building is completely burned down to the ground. If you lose your hitpoints the level also ends and you are rushed off to the hospital and have to pay a fine.
The visual style is most likely what immediately catches your eye when looking at footage of the game. It looks to be using a similar technique as Square-Enix’s 2DHD engine that we’ve seen for games like Octopath Traveler and the upcoming Live A Live. However, unlike those titles, here it often misses the mark in motion. Firegirl relies heavily on fast paced movement and while the sprite-art is really clean, the environments are rendered with 3D models. This makes it difficult to navigate throughout the levels, because the game doesn’t always clearly communicate what the ways are to progress. While you can look up and down while moving, it’s hard to see where doors are located and when doors connect to other rooms and spaces. The visual style therefore comes across as a bit of a mess. I’d have much preferred the game to use a complete 2D sprite-art, because it would’ve made navigation and exploration much less of a hassle.
What doesn’t help is that Firegirl gets repetitive very very quickly. While there are few levels that try to change up the pacing like saving people on a moving train, most of the time you’ll be exploring the same burning apartment building that has no logical structure to it. Often you’ll come across rooms that have no power up, no connection to another room or anything to do except waste your time. While I admire this approach to showcase how stressful rescue can be for a firefighter, it just makes the gameplay boring and repetitive. After each mission you get rewarded new funds, and if you complete the mission successfully new facilities that you can upgrade at the fire station. These upgrades are a requirement to be able to complete certain levels, because I’ve come across multiple buildings where there simply was no way to replenish the water tank which caused me to burn down with the building. But the game does a bad job explaining what your objectives are and how to locate civilians during a rescue. There’s a general indicator coming from the fire chief when you are near a civilian, but because certain doors will be blocked by fire after passing through, I found myself more often than not, completely locked out of successfully completing a mission.
And that’s before I get to the frankly disappointing performance on the Nintendo Switch. Consequently every time I entered a large hallway in a burning building the game would freeze for a full second and drop frames immediately. When getting hit by fire while hovering with the hose the game also often became sluggish to play. The game isn’t as graphically demanding as other titles on Switch and given the consistency of these dropped frames I’m hopeful it can be patched out. But it does make this Switch title feel like a compromised experience. And that’s before we get to the soundtrack which repeats itself nearly non-stop and gets tedious very fast. As well as sound effects and bugs, like whenever you obtain new fans after a rescue and the new fans animation and sound effect keeps repeating for a minute. Even if you like roguelite’s and don’t mind the rough edges, the Switch version hardly feels ideal to play.
Overall I found that with Firegirl there was a wish to recreate a 2D-Metroid escape sequence as a full videogame. But the developer hasn’t seemed to grasp why such a sequence works so well. If a player has gained familiarity with an environment and is then tasked with finding the exit under new conditions and a countdown, it creates tension and excitement. A player will rely on their gained knowledge and skill to beat the timer and is left with a rush of relief and feeling of success. However in Firegirl there is no set-up and the game quickly devolves into frustration because of a disorienting layout, repetitive gameplay and the occasional bug or visual glitch. While there’s definitely an idea here it seems that Firegirl is unable to escape this Switch port unscathed.
Stop for a second and think about it. What were all the new or old hobbies you decided to take up during the COVID-19 pandemic? Was knitting finally back in action? Did you finish that backlog of games like you always wanted? Or did you decide to pursue further education or learn a new skill? Whatever you’re imagining, I can tell you that you’ve probably spent most of that time more wisely than I have, because I fell into the deep dark void that is board game collecting. Over the last two years, I’ve been going on a bit of a rampage collecting all sorts of board games: from long two-player epics like Star Wars: Rebellion to casual fun card games like Claim. Unfortunately, a pandemic is not the best time to start with collecting physical board games to play with multiple people. However, that did not stop me from backing board games on Kickstarter as well as learning about Oink Games. Oink is a very special board game company that specializes in smaller, group-focused board games. Their titles are not only well designed but come packaged in these lovely small boxes that contain all the components. While they aren’t necessarily expensive, their printing tends to be limited since the games are designed in Japan. Therefore, when they announced a digital collection of a selection of their titles with free future updates adding more games to the mix, I was immediately interested. Let’s Play Oink Games may just be even better than playing the actual board games themselves.
Let’s first quickly go over what is in this collection. At the time of this review, there are five playable titles in the game with more to follow over time. These titles are: A Fake Artist Goes to New York, Deep Sea Adventure, Moon Adventure, Startups, and Mr. Face. Each one is an entire unique game with its own set of rules and mechanics. Right off the bat, I immediately noticed the clean presentation. While the collection isn’t as polished as Nintendo’s own 51 Clubhouse Games, I did really like the combination of the visual presentation and physicality of the pieces. Even in the selection-menu all the games are displayed like their boxes, with the accurate description and summary on the back of the box. Each game is accompanied by its own musical theme and design, such as Deep Sea Adventure’s aquatic ambient soundscape and the building pressure in Moon Adventure. There’s also a ton of character icons to choose from for your profile, and overall the game adds to the charm by allowing you to communicate with other players through emoji.
So what are the games themselves actually like? My personal favorites here are probably Moon Adventure and Startups. In Moon Adventure, you play cooperatively with the other players and try to gather supplies from the moon before oxygen for any player runs out. It is a very tense and exciting game that really puts communication and teamwork at the forefront of the experience. Panicking as your oxygen supply runs out and the oxygen supply depots get destroyed due to bad luck never ceases to be a true ‘oh crap’ moment when played with a group. On the opposite end of that is Startups: a game that sees you bidding on companies, while trying to gain a majority monopoly and having the players that don’t have the majority paying up the difference. It’s fast-paced, always feels balanced, and can shift suddenly when it becomes a staredown between two players betting for the majority.
That’s not to say that the remaining games aren’t fun on their own. Deep Sea Adventure works on a similar premise to Moon Adventure but is more competitive. Players dive to the bottom of the ocean and have to spend oxygen to get themselves and their collected loot back into the submarine. This is much more akin to a gambling game, where the tension is between picking the right moment to return or drowning because another player went back after collecting only a single piece of treasure. Thankfully there’s also a few creative titles in here. A Fake Artist Goes to New York and Mr. Face both feel very similar to games you could find in a Jackbox Party Pack. In A Fake Artist, each player has to draw the same prompt with a single stroke of their brush. The twist is that one of the players does not know the prompt and has to pretend to know what they’re drawing. It becomes a fun game where all the players are second-guessing their friends as to who could be the fake artist. Thanks to a clever rule, the fake artist still has the chance to win when there’s a tie, by guessing what the actual prompt was. Mr. Face has each player arranging pieces of a face in order to portray a specific facial expression and the other players have to guess what the corresponding card is.
Now that’s quite a bit of game for your money, and what’s great about Let’s Play Oink Games is that all the games support both local and online play. Though in my experience online play has definitely been the way to go. See, certain games aren’t compatible with local play due to their nature and mechanics. Startups, for example, can only be played online or with your own Switch screen, due to the fact that each player needs to draw a hand that’s secret from the others. Likewise, A Fake Artist actually asks local players to close their eyes one at a time, before deciding who will be the fake artist. While I trust my friends to actually do that, it does feel like not every game has made that perfect transition to a digital board game. Though I should say that playing a game like A Fake Artist Goes to New York online is a much more streamlined experience than the actual physical board game. When played in real life, it requires one player to remain neutral and that player divides the roles between fake artist and the other players. So you do gain one additional player by playing this digital version of Oink Games. That also adds to the value argument. Most Oink Games cost between 20 and 25 dollars due to their limited printing and high import costs from Japan. With this digital version you have a great way to get familiar with these games, without immediately having to spend a lot on each one. That said, I should add that ever since getting into Let’s Play Oink Games, I did buy nearly all of the games in this collection for my own personal board game nights. Some things never change I suppose.
The final downside is that so far the online servers haven’t been as active as I’ve wanted them to be. It’s not too surprising, since this isn’t as high profile a digital board game as say Wingspan or even 51 Clubhouse Games. But finding a table to join and getting the random players involved ready to start the game didn’t go as smoothly as I was hoping. Thankfully, I got friends together and we played for nearly three hours and tried each one of the games. One of them despises board games but even he came around and wanted to play more of Mr. Face, Startups and Fake Artist in the future. So if you can get multiple friends to buy in on this collection, you’ll almost certainly have a great time with it. If you’re by yourself however be cautious that the fun could take a while to find online.
Let’s Play Oink Games is an incredible value for money. Each game in this collection is very well designed. While not each one is great for every situation, especially with local play for titles like Startups and Mr. Face, every game is completely different from the other. And heck, the game will be supported with free updates over time that add even more games to this collection. I’m hoping that titles like Nine Tiles Panic, Insider, Hey Yo, Modern Arts, and Troika will be added eventually. Oink Games makes some of the most fun board games you can buy and by having them this accessible, I’m certain I’m going to be playing them for years to come.
The saying “You can make a good movie out of anything” applies just as well to video games, if you ask me. Sure, we more often than not see games focusing on jumping through fantastical worlds, beating up horrifying creatures, and exploring planets beyond our own, but more and more games are starting to gravitate towards more recognizable settings and themes. Last year’s Unpacking focused on the stories told through moving houses and games like Say No! More focus on themes like worker empowerment and mental wellbeing. Hundred Days found its inspiration in the intricate art of winemaking. Now I enjoy a good bottle of wine from time to time, but rarely stop and think about the journey it has taken to get this liquid into my glass (as I tend to avoid with almost any consumer product). Hundred Days strikes a beautiful balance by presenting the winemaking process for the challenge it truly is, as well as being a clever strategy game that is mostly a good fit for Switch.
Hundred Days has several ways to play, but the main introduction of the gameplay happens in the Story mode, in which you play a stressed out worker who inherits a winery in France without having any previous experience in winemaking. Along your winemaking journey you meet a cast of friendly and diverse characters who play a role in the region where you produce your wine. Along the way you’ll not only learn how to play the game but also all the aspects that come with producing this delicious grape juice.
At first this can all feel a bit overwhelming. You aren’t playing minigames to pick the grapes and crush them into broth. Instead Hundred Days takes a strategic approach to its gameplay. On the screen you find a board consisting of squares and cards in your hand. Each card has a particular tetris-like shape when played on the board. You can rotate the piece before placing it and once you’ve placed the piece you get options to adjust the process of making your wine. For example, when crushing the grapes you can decide how much pressure you can use to determine the amounts of tannin and sweetness the wine will contain. After placing your piece you can advance to your next turn and place new cards on the board. Some actions require multiple turns, like aging or harvesting, requiring you to think ahead. At the same time, all the actions you perform cost you money, which, as long as you aren’t selling your final wine, puts a real sense of timed pressure on gameplay. Thankfully, there’s no requirement to take immediate action. The core focus throughout the game remains being strategic.
Once you get the hang of things, this makes the gameplay loop incredibly rewarding. As you sell more wine and gain more reputation, you can increase your machinery and tools to produce different kinds of wine. These upgrades are very expensive and you really get the feeling that the journey of winemaking is a race against time. From the moment you plant your first vineyard to the end of the season where you need to sell wine to stay in business, it really makes you experience that challenging feeling of making “the perfect wine.” Perfection here being pretty much impossible, because the game accounts for all the weather conditions, wine trends and speculative bubbles that exist in real life. You may have gotten an 85% rating on a Barbera you’ve just bottled, but Chardonnay has just become a trend and you’ve put all your effort into getting this red wine as good as it is.
All or some of this may sound unappealing, but I was struck by how enjoyable I found this repeating loop of mixing up ingredients and investing in new tools like yeast and specific casks to add to the flavor of my wines. I just kept saying to myself: “Okay, one more round. Okay, one more season. Okay, one more type of wine.” Fitting the pieces together on the board becomes more challenging as you only have so much time within a season to complete a certain action. Are you going to forego weeding the vineyards to upgrade the winery? Did you forget to prune the fields during winter in order to clean your machinery? All these actions compound on each other. For example, you can make a deliberate choice to not clean the casks to influence the flavor of the wine you produce. The game uses every mechanic at its disposal to give you both full control of the creation of the wine as well as making sure that you can’t control everything. I once experienced a winter season with non-stop snow, which prohibits you from pruning the vineyard, giving me a very dire next season in which I barely produced enough wine to stay in business. It’s these moments that give the player a chance to tell their own story with the wine they’re creating, very much akin to those you may read on the back of a wine label at your local supermarket.
That having been said, the Switch version of Hundred Days does run into some issues. I found the menus to be very confusing to navigate during most of my early time with the game. Only on my second run of the Endless mode did I realize I had to purchase new items, which are located in a separate menu from the upgradeable technologies. The game doesn’t do a fantastic job in communicating these things. What’s even more annoying is that when playing in Docked mode, the game’s controls can be rather unintuitive. In Handheld mode you can fully use the touchscreen and navigate the menus and actions on the board easily. But the controller options have a preset in which you can only navigate with the joystick and a couple of shortcuts located on the D-pad. I even found that the purchasing of new land, something you need to tap on with the touchscreen controls, is impossible to do with the controller itself. I do hope the developers take another look at the controller options on the Nintendo Switch, because I just found myself putting down the console and using only the touchscreen whenever possible.
Hundred Days is the definition of the saying: “You can’t rush perfection.” It does a phenomenal job as a strategy game by making you live through the hardships of the winemaking process. The game provides you with all the tools you need to create a great wine, but also teaches you how hard this actually is, and how little control you do have over it. This gameplay loop of figuring out how to improve your wines, and fighting against the overwhelming odds makes Hundred Days an absolutely unique experience on the Switch. I do hope that the game will be updated with additional controller options over time, because I can see myself playing Hundred Days for far longer than that title suggests.
Yu-Gi-Oh! is very near and dear to my heart. I am still actively collecting and battling with these trading cards after nearly twenty years. Throughout the format changes that Konami has implemented, there still is a unique playstyle to Yu-Gi-Oh! (YGO) compared to other trading card games like Magic the Gathering and Pokémon. That said, over the last few years it’s been interesting to see Konami experiment with new formats using the YGO IP for spin-off trading card games. First, there was the incredibly popular Duel Links, using a 3x3 format and adjusted rules for quick playing sessions on mobile devices. That was translated to a physical trading card version called Speed Duels, that used similar rules to Duel Links but has its own card-pool. Japan however, got an entirely new format a couple of years ago called RUSH DUEL. While word on the street is that this system will not make its way west in the physical form, Yu-Gi-Oh! RUSH DUEL: Dawn of the Battle Royale!! is possibly the first taste for duelers to try out this new format. The problem is that the game is so incredibly lackluster that it immediately banished all my interests for RUSH DUEL to the Shadow Realm.
RUSH DUEL: Dawn of the Battle Royale!! (RDBR) follows a format that is similar to earlier story-based YGO video games. You play as a generic character that just moved to the new city where a new dueling card game is sweeping the nation. This time around you become friends with the inventors of a new format called Rush Duel. You play Rush Duels against other citizens and collect points to buy packs. Rinse and repeat. While the game uses a sort of pleasing visual style, the world in which you travel from duel to duel is slow and cumbersome to navigate. The characters are incredibly annoying and are definitely geared towards a younger audience, although I’m still struggling to exactly nail down why these kids are so into dueling. My suspicion is that the game has to tie into the currently Japanese exclusive series but can’t interfere with a nameless player character. This gives RDBR very little personality and made me resent playing most of the time. Did I mention that the soundtrack is terrible too? It’s filled with repetitive tunes that pushed me to flip on a podcast as soon as possible.
So what makes Rush Duels stand out from the standard formats? There’s a couple of core differences, but the goal of the game remains the same: defeat your opponent by reducing their 8000 life points to zero. By summoning monsters you can defeat your opponents cards, and there’s spell and trap cards to boost your own monsters or resist your enemy’s creatures. Rush Duels are special because there’s no summoning limit. You can play as many cards from your hand as long as you can meet the summoning condition. This means that level 5 or above cards can be summoned almost immediately as long as you tribute a monster that you’ve already summoned. This does give the game a very fast-paced feel when your hand is dealt just right. What makes YGO sometimes a bit more methodical is that the summon limits in the traditional game need to be circumvented by special summons and other means, in order to keep as many monsters on the board as possible or combine them towards bigger monsters to outwit your opponent. That ties into the second change for Rush Duels, which is the drawing phase. Unlike regular YGO, at the beginning of your turn you get to refill your entire hand up to five cards. This would break a normal game of YGO, but since RDBR uses its own specific card pool, there are some interesting combinations you can quickly make. One example is sending monsters from your hand to the graveyard to chain their effects to allow you to summon even more monsters, without needing to draw new cards first. It’s definitely noticeable if you have played the original card game before, but this does come with the biggest drawback of the game: the card pool.
Because of these unique rules, Rush Duel uses its own cards that are different from the original trading card game. You may recognize some monsters, but most of the effects are changed to accommodate the new rules. This makes learning the decks pretty difficult if you are a YGO veteran. You need to remember what the new cards do and how to adapt to this new format. Where a Blue-Eyes White Dragon previously could’ve held you back on the first turn, now it’s a an easily summonable card that invites resistance from the opponent in new ways. You’d think this would make RDBR a lot of fun, but the constantly slow UI and card readability issues made every duel a slog to play through. You have to press a separate button to read the effects of cards in close-up and also sit through a few seconds of the game loading the card. The UI is simply not ideal to play a YGO game that requires you to read a lot of text.
Additionally, the new ruleset does “downgrade” the game, in my eyes. Whereas usually building towards those big boards with strong monsters is what makes YGO fun, in RDBR it's simply a matter of building a giant wall of monsters to hide behind or break through the other player’s wall. Since you can play all monsters from your hand in a single turn, put them in defense position so that you take no damage, and wait to draw a better hand, the game loses any of its tactics that makes it fun to outsmart opponents. It’s simply a matter of who has the biggest stick. It’s almost as if you’re showing up with your $500 deck to a local tournament and playing against a kid who has just bought a deck off the shelf. There’s not much fun in simply stomping on the competition without any thought.
This is where my entire experience with Yu-Gi-Oh! RUSH DUEL: Dawn of the Battle Royale!! just fell apart. The boring music, the simplistic graphics style, the awful UI-elements and these new rules that make battles a slog to sit through have made this game one of the worst YGO experiences I’ve ever had. Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution is a fantastic battle simulator that pays homage to the anime and gives you so many cards to experiment with. RDBR locks you into a system that doesn’t seem to understand what has made YGO so diverse and fun to play. If anything, I’m glad we got Rush Duels out of the way since next year will see the release of a proper YGO card simulator in the form of Master Duel. If this is all we hear of Rush Duel in the West, that will be fine by me. With this Battle Royale, everyone ends up being the loser.
It’s often remarked upon that American humor differs a lot from European humor. You can see it in other forms of media like films and television, where jokes are played up for laughs or rely on physical pain and anguish. The Procession to Calvary caught my attention with its description of being very Monty Python-esque, while also being developed by a singular creator. It may have been released back in June on Switch, but I only just got around to playing it and really wanted to shine a spotlight on it before the end of the year. While it's definitely not an experience for everyone, its usage of a very special visual style and loads upon loads of dry humor made it one of the most comedic experiences on Switch for me this year.
After the end of the Holy War you find yourself entering the Renaissance with a fairly large problem. There’s been a new rule imposed by the new leader, Immortal John, that no more murders can be commited. The problem is, you love murders. There’s only one more person that should be killed, and that is the previous tyrant ‘Heavenly’ Peter, who fled south. As an unnamed female knight, your job is to make your way south and get rid of this treasonous leader. As a true point-and-click adventure game, it's up to you to find all sorts of random items, interact with strange townsfolk, and trade stuff for access to new buildings while completing your adventure.
From the second the game boots up, I was struck by the incredible visual style. There have been games before that use copyright-free paintings to decorate and design their worlds, most notably the Rock of Ages series. But what makes The Procession to Calvary so interesting is that each background, character, and object has been carefully extracted from Renaissance paintings to create the entire world. Buildings, people, and creatures have been mixed and mashed together with simple wireframe animations that give it all a very unique look. You can inspect nearly every object in the game and collect and combine items to solve all sorts of puzzles. For example, in the beginning of the game you’ll need to retrieve the oars of a boat for a sailor, so you need to ask a crippled man who has been using oars to move around if you can have them. This results in a trading quest where presenting the right item to the right person can help you advance. It’s all pretty basic by the books, and while some solutions are a tad overly complex and obscure, I was never truly stuck on how to proceed.
I think the Monty Python-esque description does an excellent job of explaining the game, but it doesn’t just stop at these ‘cut-out-like’ animations. The real gem here is the dry and witty comedic writing at play here. Since you can interact with nearly everything, and most people on display are pretty much asses about everything, the main protagonist is taking the piss at almost every turn. This leads to some of the most fun textual interactions I’ve had this year with a video game. Take, for example, a boatman you meet when trying to make your way to Heavenly Peter’s basilisk. He requires you to show a boat pass to get across the river. When prompted on how to get a boat pass, he simply states he doesn’t know where to find one. Pressing him about this, he replies that it never even crossed his mind to inquire about one, though he does agree that he should probably know that stuff. The game has tons of these interactions that play on the absurd, dry, and dark humor that give The Procession to Calvary its own flavor. There are too many good jokes here that I really don’t want to spoil, but they definitely add to the overall vibe of this weird turbulent time in history.
The Procession to Calvary just really has an eye for the details. The music is a particular standout. It’s all classical music (copyright-free of course) but unlike it being non-diëgetic (i.e. you can hear the music in the game but it’s not being visibly played within the scene), it’s all being played on screen by little musicians hidden in every background of the screen. You can even ‘sing along’ or applaud the artists. Another fine detail is the way in which the game often comments on how weird and absurd things are and that certain actions have consequences. You can technically murder every character in this game, but that will change the outcome you may be expecting. It gives off the feeling of a classic point-and-click adventure game, but with humor on so many levels that it surpasses some of those classics in my opinion.
That being said, this may not be the best game to play on the Nintendo Switch. The Procession to Calvary does still use a cursor, and while you can speed up or slow down the pointer, I did get confused quite a bit about what button to press or which items are interactable. The movement speed of the main character is also painfully slow and cannot be sped up, which does make moving from screen to screen quite a bit of a drag. It also wouldn’t be a point-and-click game without some truly bizarre puzzles that cause you to carefully read every line of dialogue in case you may miss something you need down the line. Some interactions are just a bit too vague for me to fully recommend the game to absolutely everyone.
That said, I had a great time playing through The Procession to Calvary. I absolutely adored the art style and the way it mashes artistic paintings to become its own unique thing, instead of simply a reference or shorthand. The humor is probably the best writing I’ve experienced all year, but in true European fashion, it’s dark, dry, and very self-referential at times. While it does have a few shortcomings, including the way in which the game has been translated to Switch and its slow movement speed, The Procession to Calvary was a delight the entire time I played it. If you are a fan of point-and-click games or just want a short and funny experience, I’d recommend this game over any Renaissance art gallery.
The Nintendo Switch clearly isn’t the most powerful console on the market right now. While we know that Nintendo’s first party offerings make the most efficient use of the system’s architecture, it’s obvious that some other developers are unable to release their titles without making some compromises at this point. One of these compromises has resulted in certain games receiving a cloud version. When Guardians of the Galaxy was first announced, I was beyond excited seeing that a Switch version was coming as well, before being rudely awakened by the news that this would only be through the power of the cloud. Having had a great experience while playing The Forgotten City - Cloud Version last month, I went in with an optimistic mindset on Guardians of the Galaxy for Switch. The good news is that I was enjoying everything about the game. The bad news is that all that enjoyment was going down the drain thanks to it being a cloud version.
Guardians of the Galaxy is a third-person action game in which you play as Marvel’s titular group of space heroes. While focusing on playing as Star-Lord (aka Peter Quill), you control the Guardians through extensive set-pieces with sharply written humor and a phenomenal ‘80s inspired soundtrack, similar to the movies that made these characters mainstays of the Marvel Universe. While it’s clearly going for its own style and story, separate from the two theatrical films and its depiction of these characters, you will still thoroughly enjoy the Guardians and their banter while playing. The writing is very sharp and sets the tone for a great and comedic intergalactic story.
Gameplay is focused mainly on exploring all sorts of weird alien planets and science-fiction locations. While you control Star-Lord at all times, you can give the other Guardians directions on what to do or how to aid you during combat or exploration. Rocket can hack into specific devices, Drax can move heavy objects, Gamora can reach high places, and Groot uses his vines to create new paths. This also reflects in combat. As Star-Lord you can shoot your elemental guns to damage and stun enemies, but the other guardians can also deal high damage, stagger, or even trap enemies. Combat is a ton of fun and even has little character beats as well, with Rocket, for example, even making a game out of whoever can defeat the most enemies. Overall, it definitely feels more like a traditional linear exploration experience, but it's these characters that truly give the game its unique flavor. When charging the Guardians meter, you can huddle together to give the group a pep-talk, after which the licensed soundtrack turns on and all the characters gain an enormous attack boost. There’s a lot of attention to detail, and I’m sure that die-hard Marvel fans will eat their heart out for the references. I mean, heck, Fin Fang Foom is referenced in the opening chapter and honestly that’s just scratching the surface of how deep the love for the comics goes.
While all of this applies to the game as a whole, I have to admit that playing it on Switch with the Cloud Version was quite literally a drag. For this review, I used both my Switch OLED with a permanent wired connection to my high-speed internet as well as using it on my own Wi-Fi network. You’d think that a cloud version would at the very least bypass some of the more frequent problems with games that cannot run natively on the Nintendo Switch. But unfortunately, I was still disappointed with the final visual result of the game. There’s a surprising amount of pop-in, low quality models, loading times, and even framerate drops and inconsistencies while playing the Cloud Version. I was expecting the game to use the hardware that it was actually running on to show off a similar version to current and last-gen consoles, but even here it seems that the Switch version is undercooked. Worst of all is that the feel of the game can’t be described in any other way than sluggish. All the time while moving, whether it was in combat or during exploration, it felt like Star-Lord was walking through Jell-O. I couldn’t fully determine what caused this to be the case, though the slight input lag that is usually present in cloud-based offerings, definitely didn’t help. It all made the game feel so much slower than it's designed to be, especially alongside the upbeat characters and the pace at which the game moves along.
Compare this official screenshot to this one I captured on the Switch and there's a clear visual difference, even though it should be running on similar/superior hardware
I genuinely enjoyed my time with Guardians of the Galaxy, but I couldn’t bring myself to continue playing the mess that it is on Switch. While my high-speed internet connection should be easily able to run this game smoothly, it is clear that this version was an afterthought. The characters, story, music, and gameplay are all completely up my alley, but having to play the game in this sluggish way—and of course having to play via an internet connection—made for quite a miserable experience. I’m 100% I will pick up Guardians of the Galaxy somewhere down the road, but the Cloud Version should be skipped by anyone even remotely interested in what’s on offer here.
Everything old is new again. At least, that's what the current wave of retro-inspired indie games would have you believe. While a lot of games have released over the last ten years that have completely embraced the visual aesthetics of the ‘80s with gorgeous 8, 16, and 32-bit graphics, it was surprising to me that the era of the leap to 3D still remained somewhat untouched. But of course, the thirty-year cycle shall spin forevermore, and it seems like it's the dawn of a new retro revival era. It turns out that DUSK's attempt to resurrect traditional DOOM and Quake is one that deserves to be noticed and played. The Switch version certainly doesn't underperform here, making DUSK the October highlight of this year.
DUSK consists of three campaign chapters that follow the story of a lone figure fighting a satanic cult. While story beats are not obviously spelled out, the setup allows for a lot of creative weapons, enemies, obstacles, and areas to battle hordes of cultists in. The game looks and plays like a classic 3D shooter such as Quake, with fast movement and the ability to shoot and jump at the same time. The art style looks like a PSX or ‘90s 3D Windows PC game that gives it a fresh look compared to modern shooters. You can even adjust the pixel density making it almost look like an N64 or pixelated Game Boy title.
While its levels are large and give you plenty of incentives to find secrets or kill all enemies, it's the movement that feels just fantastic. Classic skills like bunny hopping work great and give you a good sense of flow that rewards getting up close and personal with enemies. Blasting with shotguns, shooting exploding grenades, or going to town with double sickles, each weapon feels good to use and you're encouraged to swap weapons often by finding specific ammo types or power-ups. From being able to scale walls infinitely or unleash a non-stop wave of bullets, I found myself hooked on the experience again and again, even when a run didn't end particularly well for me. The absolutely phenomenal score only supplements this feeling. The slow tension rising in the soundtrack explodes with heavy guitars and metal rock to a crescendo that goes so well with blowing up baddies.
The best part might just be that the Switch is absolutely nailing performance here. It almost made me consider that the developers used an actual blood sacrifice to get it to work, because the Switch port does not disappoint: from its locked 60FPS in both handheld and docked mode to its plethora of options. There's a field of view slider that goes up to 150 and support for motion aiming that can be toggled and adjusted in many ways; HD rumble also helps a lot here. Loading times are fast and I didn't encounter any crashes or issues while playing. It's an outlier in this regard and a standard I hope other indie games will try to follow.
If there's one negative about DUSK, it's that the core structure and type of gameplay does become rather repetitive over time. It's still a classic FPS "boomer shooter" in that sense. You’ll be picking up keys and accessing certain doors after having killed a number of enemies. I'd honestly advise players to tackle the game a few levels per night since it can be a lot of the same if played in one go. Even so, blasting through the game is still a ton of fun and for the true hardcore players out there, the increased difficulty modes are a good way of testing all your skills.
DUSK’s arrival on Switch has been a long time coming. But I'm honestly relieved that the creator took his time sanding down and sharpening every little corner of DUSK for its Switch debut. It feels like a game that was meant to be played on Nintendo’s console and uses its retro inspirations to pump new life into this particular genre of games. If you ask me, it's the beginning of a new dawn.
From the outset it is hard to argue why Tetris Effect: Connected connected (no pun intended) with me so much. I can understand that for most people Tetris Effect in general is “just another Tetris game”. Tetris is now almost forty years old and I’d wager pretty much anyone looking at the review has played a game of Tetris in their life. Be it on the original Nintendo Game Boy or its many great iterations with the likes of Tetris DS and Tetris 99, just to name a few of the over 200+ ports that exist of this game. But that legacy not only carries weight, but also a sort of pressure. How can you T-spin Tetris in a new direction after so many variants and versions have come before. Resonair found a quite simple answer with the original Tetris Effect: emphasise the immersive and entrancing natures of the game with a vibrant, ever-changing visual style and music. Tetris Effect: Connected has to compromise these visuals a little bit, but in the end feels like the best way to play Tetris on your Nintendo Switch.
Tetris Effect: Connected is indeed Tetris. Big shock. You flip and rotate pieces consisting of blocks to form lines. Once a line is formed, it is removed from the board and the cycle continues. Points are kept and the game is over when your stack of blocks hits the top of the board. What makes Tetris Effect stand out however is its use of a magnificent soundtrack, sound-effects and visuals to create a truly immersive experience. This is best experienced in the main single player campaign called “Journey mode”. As you traverse through different soundscapes, landscapes, locations and abstract visuals you will find yourself getting sucked into stacking and twisting these blocks. Each time a block is rotated or placed, the soundtrack and sound effects are adapted into making your actions fit the beat of the song that is played. Once you’ve cleared enough lines, more visuals come on screen and the song advances. Needless to say that Resonair used their experience developing REZ: infinite and Lumines to create another fantastic soundtrack that almost feels as if you are composing it while playing. All this fits together like a glove and turns Journey mode into an almost meditative experience.
There’s an emotional core to making your way through all these levels and feeling the human connection behind it all. You are no longer just simply playing a game, but are feeling the ways in which art, music and culture have shaped the world. Using Tetris, a game almost everyone has played or recognizes, to connect you to other cultures with music and visuals feels almost ethereal at times. Yes, it all comes across as if I’ve taken some good LSD and started playing Tetris, but honestly Tetris Effect excels at making the experience of placing blocks give off a feeling of relief. It gets me into a very specific zone while playing and that makes it last for far longer than any other game of Tetris I’ve ever played before or since.
This is not to say that Tetris Effect: Connected has no gameplay tricks of its own. One of the key features is the Zone-mechanic. When you’ve filled up a meter you can perform this move to make time freeze. This allows you to clear up lines that are then removed from the bottom of the board. This gives you some great versatility when you are stuck in a bind and nearing the top of the playing field. I especially like the fact that you can actually create multiple Tetris-clears this way, allowing you to achieve an Octoris (8 lines), Dodecatris (12-15 lines), Perfectris (18-19), Impossibilitris (22 lines) and even higher scores.
The Connected part in Tetris Effect: Connected comes from its multiplayer additions that have been added to other versions over time. These multiplayer modes worked great in my experience and bring some much needed variety to the game. Unlike Tetris 99, where competition is key, in Connected-mode, you play together with other players against a mysterious piece in the middle of a universe. You each have your own boards and try to rack up a score, while this piece throws obstacles and hindrances at you and the other players. Once you’ve filled up the zone-meter, you get connected with the other two players. This is where each individual board turns into a single combined board and players take turns in dropping blocks to remove lines. The more lines removed, the more damage is being done to the mysterious piece. Gameplay is super solid in this mode and I’ve found it a lot of fun because unlike other Tetris competitive modes, you actually feel as if you are working together. If there’s a game over, players can be revived to keep playing. The other multiplayer modes are a bit more classic. Such as a score attack and zone mode, which transfers all the lines cleared when using Zone to the other player as an obstacle. Resonair has also been keeping up with weekly events, allowing players to unlock special avatars to use in competitions and show off online. The game also fully supports crossplay with all other versions, so you can even play Connected together with friends on Xbox, PlayStation, Oculus and PC.
For a game launching alongside the Nintendo Switch OLED, Tetris Effect: Connected couldn't be a better choice to show off the new OLED screen on the system. The game looks jaw-dropping on this big screen and helps so much with the immersion. Both the colors pop vibrantly and make the game look much more alive during the levels in journey mode. It truly is the best showcase for what makes the OLED screen stand out from the other Nintendo Switch systems. Graphically the game has definitely needed some compromises to run as smoothly as it does on the Nintendo Switch. While I encountered no slowdown and had a stable 60FPS in both online and offline modes, the visuals definitely aren’t as crisp as they are on other versions. That honestly is a bit of a bummer, but for me personally having Tetris Effect: Connected on the go is an absolute win in my book. Yes, there’s no VR support and these visuals lose a few of their particle effects, but the music still rules and the gameplay is probably some of the best Tetris you can play on any system. This easily beats both Tetris 99 and Puyo Puyo Tetris for me as the best Tetris game on the Nintendo Switch and I can’t honestly give it more praise than that.
So yes, Tetris Effect: Connected is still Tetris at its core, but I believe it's so much more than that. It’s a bold visual statement. Its focus on culture and the ability for humans to bond over artificial things such as art, music, science and games shines throughout each of the levels in Journey mode. It elevates Tetris to a level beyond a mere puzzle game for on the train or as a piece of software that sold an old grey handheld system. It understands that Tetris is everywhere and that it is a part of culture. It understands that videogames are a part of our world and shared experiences and tries to communicate this through abstract worlds and ethereal music. While the gameplay of Tetris is still brilliant after all these years, Tetris Effect: Connected shows us how much video games have grown as an art form. From abstract blocks falling down a void on a Elektronika 60 computer to this all encompassing recognizable piece of art. I love Tetris Effect: Connected because it keeps reminding me why I love video games. There’s really nothing else quite like it. If you think this is just another game of Tetris, I urge you especially to give this game a try. Who knows? It may even change your life.
When I previewed Lost in Random a month or so ago, I was cautiously optimistic. Its unique design and world-building made for an engaging combination of a strong narrative story and its own blend of card-gameplay. Returning to finish the game on Switch proved to be somewhat of a reality-check as it was clear that this version wasn’t on the same power-level as the PC. However, after spending more time it’s clear that a graphical downgrade isn’t what hinders Lost in Random under the hood.
Lost in Random follows the story of the sisters Even and Odd who live in a town called Onecroft. On her 12th birthday, Odd rolls the Queen’s magical dice and is taken away to live in the palace of Sixtopia under the guidance of the queen. However, one night Even is awoken by a strange specter that she decides to follow. Along the way she meets her new friend Dicey, another living magical dice that helps Even unlock strange new powers using her special cards. From there the story twists and turns through the wonderful world of Random. Going through some spectacular locations like the twofold Two-Town and the warzone that has become the glorious kingdom of Threedom. As Even edges closer towards her goal, you also see glimpses in visions of what Odd is going through with the Queen in Sixtopia.
The world design of Lost in Random is truly marvelous. Each location has its own unique flavor and cast of characters that look as if they walked straight out of a boardgame designed for The Nightmare Before Christmas. Its signature warped stop-motion-like look makes Lost in Random almost always a feast to behold, Even if the occasional graphical glitch and lower resolution crops up on the Nintendo Switch. What I love about this world are all these little details. Domino-pieces lining the streets, giant pawns that are used to break down barriers and playing cards as spawn points for enemies. Everything in the game is designed to be reflective of the wonderful random nature that the queen aspires to. While I wouldn’t say that the story is mind blowing, there’s some great and fun characters along the way with some expertly crafted voice acting. While playing at a friend’s house I often found them watching along as I played, as if they were looking at a movie like Coraline or Paranorman.
Maybe that strong visual and narrative identity is exactly what helps Lost in Random, because while the game looks like nothing I’ve played before, its gameplay does get quite repetitive over time. Once you enter specific arenas, combat starts and Even needs to defend herself from all sorts of mechanical monsters. At first you have no way to attack them, unless you knock off crystals with your catapult. If you have your companion Dicey collect this energy you can energize cards from your deck. Once your hand of cards is fully energized you can roll Dicey to get energy points. When Dicey is thrown, time stops and you are able to spend the points on particular cards to use their effects. The selection of cards is quite varied. From the standard healing items and attacks, to traps and hazards that can easily take care of larger crowds. As the game progresses you can easily swap out cards in your deck for new playstyles which does add a bit of variety to the game. I liked creating time bubbles for enemies to get stuck in, poisoning my weapons for additional tick damage and hit them with all I got once time starts moving again. There’s a lot of strategy available and unlike other more traditional card fighters, the game takes place in the third person as an action-game. Meaning you won’t be looking passively as the attacks play out, but are always engaging in attacking, dodging and sprinting across these combat scenarios.
The biggest hurdle in Lost in Random is the pacing of the game. It frequently drags out quests and missions to a point where it can feel simply tedious to walk all the way across the town again to find a specific item. The worst offenders however are the battles themselves. Enemies start almost immediately by respawning frequently and combat doesn’t end until all enemies are defeated. It doesn’t help that combat feels slower paced because it's all a juggling act between getting energy as quickly as possible to fill up your hand, while at the same time wasting all the energy if you draw a bad hand or have an unlucky roll of the dice. There’s plenty of ways to mitigate this problem, but combat goes on and on for what feels like forever. Combat is also unavoidable and feels rather pointless, since the only reward after are coins to spend at the card store, which can easily be found by just exploring the overworld.
It was all these factors that made me sort of lose interest in Lost in Random after the third world. There’s definitely some attempts at variety here, like a combat scenario where you move a giant pawn across the battlefield to reach the end. But even these started to feel tedious as the same enemies kept coming back. The game became a matter of dodging until I had enough energy to throw dicey and repeat the process. It’s pacing just simply became too much of a drag to find myself fully invested in experimenting with different decks, playing styles or different approaches.
Performance on Switch is fine enough. The game aims at a stable 30fps, but doesn’t always reach it. The graphical style has taken a hard hit with its transition to Nintendo’s portable, but honestly, that was always inevitable for me personally, coming from the PC preview build I played. All things considered, Lost in Random looks and plays great on Switch.
It’s hard to fully sum up my feelings on Lost in Random. I’m almost certain that most players will have a great time exploring and playing through the game. Its visual design, story and characters are engaging and tell a fantastic tale that’s both dark and completely its own. Then again, playing the game and going through that world feels almost like a hurdle race. Each time you make some good progress, the game throws in a combat scenario that just takes all the wind out of your sails. It made me actively want to play the game in slower chunks, just not to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of these combat segments. Lost in Random definitely can hold its own against other titles and feels like a premium experience, but on it’s way there the balance between randomness and thought out design may have gotten a bit lost.
The Forgotten City is the near perfect blend of everything that sets games apart from other media. Using one of the best premises I’ve seen in quite some time, it combines a gripping narrative with memorable and unique characters that shows off its unique world and gameplay mechanics. While I definitely am avoiding any and all spoilers in this review, I would even like to encourage you to stop reading this review once I’ve explained the pitch. Going blind into The Forgotten City elevates its twists and turns to near perfection. While the Switch port of this game is a cloud-version, it may just be the precise game to show what value cloud versions of Switch titles may have. Like an endless loop, The Forgotten City has been on my mind every day since I’ve started playing it and even after I’ve seen all it has to offer, I am still ecstatic about the experience.
The premise of The Forgotten City is pretty simple. You wake up on a riverbank and are asked to help your friend who has entered an ancient Roman temple. This temple leads to an underground city where you find yourself being transported back about 2000 years in the past to an actual Roman civilization. This Roman city is terrorized by an unexplained and unpredictable curse as scribed within the walls of the city: “The many shall suffer for the sins of the one”. From here on you set out to find out what is going on within the city, if there is even a way to escape this place and how this place came to be cursed. There’s a large cast of characters to meet, who each have their own perspective on the matter and follow a particular cycle through town. As you slowly unravel the mysteries you start to find out that this city and its inhabitants are hiding more than they are willing to tell you. If this sounds appealing to you, then I urge you to read no further, because this game is brilliant in both it’s narrative approach and gameplay to engage you into its beautiful and accurate world.
For those of you who are still around, the main gameplay mechanic of The Forgotten City follows a time loop story. Similar to The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, you are able to return to the beginning of the day with your previously gained knowledge and can try and change the outcome of the curse and the destiny of the citizens. This is mostly done through talking with the characters in the game, learning their patterns and personalities and using that information to unlock new information that can aid you in finding hidden objects or keys. All with the final goal of solving the mystery of the curse and understanding what has been going on in this forgotten city. Gameplay feels mostly like a first person narrative adventure, but there is some incidental combat and simple puzzle solving as well. Mainly in the form of learning how to traverse the city, where to find specific objects and how to persuade others to trust you with their knowledge.
What I especially adored about The Forgotten City is it’s sheer attention to detail and historical accuracy. That’s not just found in the city itself, with its historical architecture and culture, but also in it’s small design elements. You can actually argue with these Roman citizens about their worldview and politics and they answer as if they’re still the greatest civilization the world has ever known. They try to actively engage in the discussion with the player and show them that while you are from an age far beyond theirs, it’s perhaps not that different from theirs. It offers some unique insights into the questions of how cultures are raised, what makes a civilization truly its own and how beliefs are reinforced throughout the centuries. A small example is that one of the characters is part of a cultist group that is convinced that there’s only one God to answer to. They don’t talk about their beliefs in public, because they fear retribution from the others, but it gives the cast of characters some great variety. Even if you only end up talking to certain people once or twice, their voice-acting leaves a marvellous impression of their character. I could relate to some of these folks, even though I definitely didn’t agree with their points of view. The game is not necessarily about proving whether one philosophy or idea is correct, but rather trying to make you, the player, think about the way our world, history and culture is preserved and presented. It’s something that could simply not be achieved in this way in another medium and I love the game for that. It’s also not always too serious and I found that debating memes with a Roman priestess was quite a delight to break up the seriousness of the curse itself.
As for the biggest downside, it’s that the Switch version of The Forgotten City is a cloud-service. While I expected a sluggish performance on my Switch over at a friends place where a WiFi connection was shared between four people and multiple devices, the game did run fine nearly 95% of the time. There was some incidental stuttering and a delay with the input of my controls, but these happened very few times and far between to never truly make the game unplayable. See, what’s so smart about making The Forgotten City a cloud version is that the game is a narrative driven title. You don’t need precise inputs and timing. You can easily just take your time with the game, hear the voice-acting and read the dialogue options. It’s perfectly suitable for a cloud-version and while playing both docked and in handheld mode, I’ve had a great time. My biggest gripe is the other complication that these cloud-versions bring, over capacitated servers. This happened to me about four times and generally annoyed me most of all. I wanted to sit down, play the game and just get lost in the world again, but after the rather long loading opening screen I was greeted with the message that I was placed in the queue due to over-capacity on the server side. This is probably the most frustrating thing about the Switch version. There’s nothing more tedious than genuinely loving a game, having it right in front of you, but being told that there’s no way to play it right now. Waiting in the queue always took a very long time and I just decided to try again at a later time.
That’s really the only sin committed here, because I love The Forgotten City. Its story and characters are thought-provoking and make you engage with the game in a multitude of ways. It actively pursued me to go for different endings, something I don’t often tend to do in video games. I really wanted to see all the ways in which the story unfolded and what that would mean for this hidden civilization. The endings left me all very satisfied and felt truly different from one another. While there definitely is a singular true ending, the game really gives most of its characters the time to shine. Especially once you unravel some of the mysteries and the picture of what is truly going on starts to form in your mind. While the Switch version is not the perfect way to play The Forgotten City, I was impressed by how well the technology performed during my time with the game. Yes, over-capacity for the servers is one hell of a downer when wanting to play a game you’ve been thinking about all day, but once you are able to play, the server has no issues keeping up. The Forgotten City in that regard is a perfect choice for a cloud version on Switch. Its narrative driven focus gives it time to breathe and even during combat segments I never felt like I was playing anything less than a full game that was looking exceptionally pretty on my Switch’s screen. I have no problem recommending the Cloud-version of The Forgotten City, but as with any streaming version your mileage may vary. What will probably not vary is your enjoyment of this game, because as far as narrative driven adventures are considered, The Forgotten City absolutely deserves to be remembered for a very long time.
Show Posts
