Switch eShop Game Reviews
Review Breakers Collection (Switch) - Visco's Neo Geo Fighters Return In Fine Form
Give me something to break
Visco Corporation, responsible for shoot 'em up Andros Dunos (1992), was a Neo Geo stalwart, releasing 15 titles across SNK’s arcade and console hardware. One of its only forays into the fighting game arena was Breakers and its semi-sequel, Breakers Revenge. In 1996, the fighting game market was flooded. And, while it...
Mini Review Melatonin (Switch) – This Is The Rhythm (Heaven) Of The Night
Beatzzz
Maybe Gloria Estefan was right, and the rhythm is, in fact, gonna get you. Melatonin certainly thinks so. This debut from indie studio Half Asleep is named for the brain hormone that helps you sleep (starting to see a pattern here). It’s a pretty pastel rhythm game where you enter an insomniac’s puzzling dreams to press or hold buttons...
Review Kaiju Wars (Switch) - Silly And Surprisingly Complicated Strategy Fun
A tactics game of monstrous proportions
If you’ve ever wanted to find out if you could save the world from giant monsters rampaging across the city, you’re in luck. Kaiju Wars gives you the chance to marshal the forces of a small nation beset by a force of five kaiju, each modelled after a famous city-destroying monster from cinema history. The...
Review Sports Story (Switch) - A Long-Awaited Sequel That's Sadly Not Up To Par
"The thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat!"
Back in 2017, the Switch library was still in its infancy and this relative lack of competition led to indie projects like Blossom Tales and Blaster Master Zero having far more visibility than they perhaps would in the current, more crowded marketplace. Another big early winner on the eShop was...
Review The Punchuin (Switch) - A Pleasant, Punchy Puzzler That's Light On Content
Fists of Furious Feathers
In a world of annual releases and mandated sequels, The Punchuin, the latest release from Shin'en (Fast RMX, The Touryst), feels like a real passion project. It's a charming love letter to puzzle game fans with an incredible amount of heart put into it. But despite that, once you start peeling back the layers, you’re left...
Review Please, Touch The Artwork (Switch) - And We Saw That It Was Good, Very Good
Stijl AND substance
To know whether you'll enjoy Please, Touch The Artwork, all you need do is glance at your bookshelf. If you have any art books whatsoever sitting there, we can pretty much guarantee you'll have a great time with this delightfully entertaining, thought-provoking, and unpretentious puzzler. Likewise, if you've ever taken yourself...
Review Sail Forth (Switch) - An Explorative, Seaborne Blend Of No Man's Sky And Wind Waker
Build an adorable fleet and set sail for adventure
Trim the sails and hoist anchor, because Sail Forth has launched without warning on Switch. This relaxing, laid-back exploration game drops players in an ocean filled with strange locals and even stranger characters. Those looking for realism in their sailing game will find better options out there,...
Review The Outbound Ghost (Switch) - A Heartfelt But Ultimately Thin Paper Mario-Like
Pale imitation
Described by developer Condradical as "Paper Mario + Undertale" on the game's Kickstarter page, The Outbound Ghost garnered some attention with its aesthetic and gameplay along with its premise: the residents of the town of Outbound all quite suddenly died. Many of them have lingering burdens that keep them from moving onto the...
Mini Review Resident Evil 7 Biohazard Cloud (Switch) - Pretty Horrific
Cloudy with no chance of fun
Note: This Cloud Version of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was tested on 100MB UW Broadband over WiFi and wired ethernet cable, along with a 5G mobile connection. The launch of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard back in 2017 was a revelation for fans of the franchise. After the lukewarm reception to Resident Evil 6 and decidedly...
Review Aka (Switch) – Ponder And Wander In A Cosy Open World That Needs Some TLC
Rest and relaxation and red panda
It’s a tale as old as time: the hero defeats the enemies, then rides off into the sunset. But what happens next? In Aka, we find out. This open-world life sim comes from solo developer Cosmic Gatto, a pseudonym for a former DreamWorks animator. It follows the eponymous and adorable Aka, a red panda who is also a...
Review Paper Cut Mansion (Switch) - Great Visuals Mask Paper-Thin Roguelite Gameplay
Doesn't stack up
Toby, it seems, is having a very bad day. He’s found himself stuck in a mansion, investigating the strange happenings within it and why he seems to be trapped in it. Paper Cut Mansion is all about uncovering the truth behind the unusual surroundings and surviving long enough to make it to the next floor. There is an attempt to...
Review Chained Echoes (Switch) - One Of The Very Best RPGs Of The Year
Breaking the chains of mediocrity
About seven years ago, a solo indie developer named Matthias Linda began working on an idea he had for a new RPG, itself likely the product of many years of producing fan games based on his genre favorites in RPG Maker. After a successful Kickstarter in 2019 and who knows how many hours of painstaking iteration,...
Review Lil Gator Game (Switch) - An Incredibly Charming Adventure With A Deep Message
Chomping at the bit for a good time
There is something to be said for trying to recapture one’s childhood. Nostalgia is (and always has been) a popular tool employed by game designers, and it is something that many modern games use to try and recapture childhood wonder. And yet, for the first time in recent memory, a new release has tried a...
Review River City Girls 2 (Switch) - The Girls Are Back With A Strong, Albeit Safe, Sequel
No relation to the Scottish soap opera
Wayforward is on the top level when it comes to long-standing indie developers. Sure, not every game is a winner but when they do land, the studio knocks it out of the park. A long history of bangers has made it one of the most respected developers in the game, and one genre it consistently excels in is the...
Review Wavetale (Switch) – Wind Waker Meets Platforming For A Cruisy But Bumpy Ride
Water water everywhere
Ah, water. Calming, tranquil, fun. You’d struggle to find a game that doesn’t have some body of water in it. But Wavetale dives into the deep end. This adventure title from Thunderful sees players exploring by walking, running, and gliding on water. Initially released for Stadia, it has now spread to PC and consoles. For...
Mini Review Papetura (Switch) - A Perfectly Crafted, Bite-Sized Puzzle Adventure
Paper view entertainment
The incredible indulgence of watching a blockbuster movie is that every second of it cost tens of thousands of dollars to produce. Each minute, a couple of million dollars of production glitz is poured into your flickering eyeballs, while you stuff your slack jaw with popcorn. Papetura is both exactly like that and nothing...
An ambitious title that just misses the mark
The world wasn’t ready for Romancing SaGa when it was first released back in 1992. It wasn’t until the PS2 remake in 2005 that the title would make its way to western shores, where it quickly gained a passionate following among fans of its non-linear storytelling, expressive characters, and...
Review Samurai Maiden (Switch) - A Saucy Hack-And-Slash That Makes For An Entertaining Romp
Pleated Swords
Samurai Maiden’s characters look great. Really great. While perhaps not leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, nevertheless, they’re a striking cast of multicoloured, glassy-eyed femme fatales that glow from every angle. As is much the case with most output that falls into anime ecchi categories, they’re not particularly...
Review The Rumble Fish 2 (Switch) - A Cult Classic Fighter Gets A Great Port
Big Fish
Despite its title being ostensibly plucked from the 1983 Francis Ford Coppola movie of the same name, publisher Sammy’s The Rumble Fish series bears zero resemblance bar the odd bout of fisticuffs. Or, in this case, bout upon bout of fisticuffs, with a cast of colourful and interestingly designed characters. The Rumble Fish series’...
Review Inscryption (Switch) - This Ingeniously Devilish Deckbuilder Is Still Ace On Switch
Going off-scrypt
The delight of Daniel Mullins’ games is the way they obliterate expectations. If there’s a problem with having such a distinctive creative voice, though, is that we've been trained by his previous games to expect the unexpected. And that's why Inscryption's arrival on Switch is such a treat: as the first of Mullins' games to hit...
Mini Review Swordship (Switch) - A Challenging, High-Speed, 'Dodge 'Em Up' With Style
Burning The Tide
Swordship looks like something from the world of Wipeout, except here the race is for your life. With buttery cel-shaded graphics and a cool ambient techno soundtrack, it's stylistically polished. The frame rate maintains a perfect 60 FPS, with its industrial periphery altering between cities and the colour of the seas moving...
Mini Review Super Kiwi 64 (Switch) - An N64-Style Platformer Ripe With Tricksy Energy
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Right first time—it was a bird
Super Kiwi 64 feels like it’s up to something. There's a tricksy energy about it that’s impossible to ignore. Players of Siactro’s earlier games might be expecting that, but this isn’t just more of the same. Super Kiwi 64 is weird in its own special way, presenting a fresh guided...
Review Soccer Story (Switch) - A Football Adventure With Plenty Of Extra Time
Yes, it's quite like Golf Story
It's a very normal part of the gaming industry for an out-of-the-blue smash hit to define a subgenre and, in the process, inspire a number of similar games. When Golf Story arrived on Switch in 2017, taking the RPG slant of Game Boy Color's Mario Golf and pushing it in new directions, it set a particular tone for...
Review Warp Drive (Switch) - An F-Zero-Inspired Racer With Promise And Performance Woes
Show me ya moves!
Fun fact: if F-Zero GX—the last home console game in Nintendo’s seminal futuristic racing series—were a person, they would be old enough to vote now. Indeed, it’s been far too long since we’ve gotten a new F-Zero, which has led to copycats filling the void as best as they can. Some of these, like Fast RMX or WipEout Omega...
Mini Review Sword Of The Vagrant (Switch) - Solid But Unremarkable Hack-And-Slashing
Vanillish
After launching on Steam in 2017, O.T.K Games’ The Vagrant has finally released on consoles with the new alias Sword of the Vagrant. The game is heavily inspired by the games of Vanillaware; renowned developers of games like Muramasa: The Demon Blade and Dragon’s Crown. This inspiration can be seen straight away with the wonderful...
Mini Review Railbound (Switch) - A Cute Locomotive Puzzler On The Perfect Platform
You have to draw the line somewhere
Railbound, the latest title from Polish studio Afterburner, makers of Golf Peaks and inbento, is a super-cute puzzler of polished presentation and deceptively monstrous difficulty. It starts ever so innocently, asking for a little railway line to connect a carriage to its engine, and sings with toots and chuffs as...
Review Front Mission 1st: Remake (Switch) - Impressive Visuals, But A Slog On The Battlefield
Best pray to the RNG gods
As the saying goes, war never changes, but this is only partly true of the Front Mission series, which puts players in control of a group of wanzer pilots as they try to outmanoeuvre the opposing side. The first game in the series has seen a whole host of remakes and releases, with the latest, Front Mission 1st: Remake,...
Review Ship Of Fools (Switch) - Roguelite Deck Defence That's A Blast With A Mate
Cannon fodder
If you’ve ever played a roguelite, you’ve seen it all before. Head out on a run, collect resources and equipment, fail at some point, use those resources to purchase upgrades, and try again and again, getting a little bit further each time until the Big Evil is defeated. In an increasingly crowded genre, Ship of Fools adheres to...
Review Finding Paradise (Switch) - A Wonderful Sequel That Will Linger Long In Your Memory
To the moon and back
The sequel to Freebird Games' superlative To The Moon, Finding Paradise is a game we weren't sure we really wanted or even needed when it first released back in 2017. How on earth could anything be expected to live up to the power and emotion of Kao Gan's wonderful 2011 adventure? Surely any attempt to return to this world and...
Review The Knight Witch (Switch) - An Intense Fusion Of Metroidvania And Bullet Hell
Bewitching
At this point, it’s easy to think that the Metroidvania genre has become played out. The indie community has positively run away with the genre over the past decade, producing projects that need to work increasingly harder to differentiate themselves from the pack. Still, this pressure has also bred some impressive innovation. Who...