Dropped Nintendo Switch Games
Dec. 14th, 2022 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingApico
A bee-keeping sim set on a procedurally generated island.
The graphics are primitive, confusing, and borderline ugly. The game never explains what you’re supposed to do, but it does go into great detail about everyone’s pronouns. Far from being “relaxing,” half an hour with this game made me hate the developers, hate myself, and hate pronouns. Apico is a game that should be $2 on Itchio, not $20 on the Nintendo Switch store. It feels like the developers are taking advantage of LGBTQ+ positivity to push an unfinished prototype, and I hate that as well.
Coromon
A pseudo-retro GBA Pokémon clone with pixel graphics.
This game has the most annoying and condescending difficulty setting selection, like, “Oh! are you a stupid little baby who wants to sleep through the game? Then the easy setting is for you I guess lol.” After shaming me for not thinking level grinding is fun, Coromon then proceeded into one of the most lengthy tutorials I’ve ever had to sit through. To make matters worse, the writing and “jokes” are cringe as hell. After half an hour of poorly-written tutorial with no actual gameplay in sight, I quit the game.
Say what you will about the Pokémon games, but within ten minutes of starting Pokémon Violet I had already changed my character out of her school uniform, given my mother tacit approval to bone the Pokémon professor, started a lesbian flirtation, embarked on an interspecies romance, and beat the shit out of a dozen pigs and one seagull. What the mainline Pokémon series has always understood is that you have to let the player actually play the game, and I appreciate that.
Sparklite
A proc-gen cross between Bastion and A Link to the Past that combines simple exploration with resource grinding.
Sparklite is very pretty, and it would be fun to play if the controls worked. Unfortunately, the controls do not work. I tried deleting and then re-installing Sparklite, but Reddit tells me that apparently the game has a bug that has the potential to mess with the basic controls every time the overworld is generated. I got the bug twice in a row, and I’m not a fan of proc-gen overworlds to begin with, so.
Feudal Alloy
A gritty hand-drawn Metroidvania set in a postapocalyptic feudal world populated by low-tech robots.
Feudal Alloy should be charming, but instead it’s difficult for all the wrong reasons. The controls are extremely janky, and the game does the cute Tunic thing (that I hate) of being very complicated in terms of character customization but not using a human language in the world or user interface. Idk man, I find it annoying when a game expects me to have a wiki open on my phone at all times.
Dark Souls gets a pass on this, but you have to understand that Dark Souls is exceptional is every conceivable way, including having a fantastic level design that leads the player forward. Hyper Light Drifter also gets a pass on this because the basic gameplay is very simple while the controls are excellent. If your game is difficult to navigate, lacks precision controls, and is needlessly complicated for no discernable purpose, that misses the point of being a Soulslike.
Feudal Alloy also has extended periods of strobe effects, and there’s a violent screen shake (plus more strobing) every time your character takes damage. If I can’t turn off a game’s strobe lights and screen shake, I turn off the game.
Islets
A bright and colorful low-fantasy Metroidvania set on an archipelago of floating islands.
Unfortunately, the level design in Islets isn’t great. There are a lot of little screens, and each screen looks the same. Enemies respawn between screens, which is super annoying if you get lost. There’s no central hub, so you have no way of healing or orienting yourself. I picked up Islets because I read a review that said it was “fun but easy,” but I think what’s “easy” to a professional game reviewer might not apply to a shitty casual gamer such as myself.
Also, the leveling system sucks. Basically, you get to level up every time you find a rare collectible, which gives you a randomly generated choice of power-ups that don’t make sense to a beginning player. This series of randomly generated choices feels a bit like Hades, except there’s no room for experimentation and you have to live with your choices for the entire game.
Still, Islets seems like it has potential, especially since the art is so good and the writing seems to be decent. Despite being somewhat annoying, the series of small one-screen rooms gives me a nostalgic Game Boy vibe that I think I might be able to enjoy more fully if I knew what I was doing. Islets is the only game on this list that I’m planning on coming back to eventually, preferably after Neoseeker (or someone to that effect) publishes a nice text-based walkthrough to help me get started.
A bee-keeping sim set on a procedurally generated island.
The graphics are primitive, confusing, and borderline ugly. The game never explains what you’re supposed to do, but it does go into great detail about everyone’s pronouns. Far from being “relaxing,” half an hour with this game made me hate the developers, hate myself, and hate pronouns. Apico is a game that should be $2 on Itchio, not $20 on the Nintendo Switch store. It feels like the developers are taking advantage of LGBTQ+ positivity to push an unfinished prototype, and I hate that as well.
Coromon
A pseudo-retro GBA Pokémon clone with pixel graphics.
This game has the most annoying and condescending difficulty setting selection, like, “Oh! are you a stupid little baby who wants to sleep through the game? Then the easy setting is for you I guess lol.” After shaming me for not thinking level grinding is fun, Coromon then proceeded into one of the most lengthy tutorials I’ve ever had to sit through. To make matters worse, the writing and “jokes” are cringe as hell. After half an hour of poorly-written tutorial with no actual gameplay in sight, I quit the game.
Say what you will about the Pokémon games, but within ten minutes of starting Pokémon Violet I had already changed my character out of her school uniform, given my mother tacit approval to bone the Pokémon professor, started a lesbian flirtation, embarked on an interspecies romance, and beat the shit out of a dozen pigs and one seagull. What the mainline Pokémon series has always understood is that you have to let the player actually play the game, and I appreciate that.
Sparklite
A proc-gen cross between Bastion and A Link to the Past that combines simple exploration with resource grinding.
Sparklite is very pretty, and it would be fun to play if the controls worked. Unfortunately, the controls do not work. I tried deleting and then re-installing Sparklite, but Reddit tells me that apparently the game has a bug that has the potential to mess with the basic controls every time the overworld is generated. I got the bug twice in a row, and I’m not a fan of proc-gen overworlds to begin with, so.
Feudal Alloy
A gritty hand-drawn Metroidvania set in a postapocalyptic feudal world populated by low-tech robots.
Feudal Alloy should be charming, but instead it’s difficult for all the wrong reasons. The controls are extremely janky, and the game does the cute Tunic thing (that I hate) of being very complicated in terms of character customization but not using a human language in the world or user interface. Idk man, I find it annoying when a game expects me to have a wiki open on my phone at all times.
Dark Souls gets a pass on this, but you have to understand that Dark Souls is exceptional is every conceivable way, including having a fantastic level design that leads the player forward. Hyper Light Drifter also gets a pass on this because the basic gameplay is very simple while the controls are excellent. If your game is difficult to navigate, lacks precision controls, and is needlessly complicated for no discernable purpose, that misses the point of being a Soulslike.
Feudal Alloy also has extended periods of strobe effects, and there’s a violent screen shake (plus more strobing) every time your character takes damage. If I can’t turn off a game’s strobe lights and screen shake, I turn off the game.
Islets
A bright and colorful low-fantasy Metroidvania set on an archipelago of floating islands.
Unfortunately, the level design in Islets isn’t great. There are a lot of little screens, and each screen looks the same. Enemies respawn between screens, which is super annoying if you get lost. There’s no central hub, so you have no way of healing or orienting yourself. I picked up Islets because I read a review that said it was “fun but easy,” but I think what’s “easy” to a professional game reviewer might not apply to a shitty casual gamer such as myself.
Also, the leveling system sucks. Basically, you get to level up every time you find a rare collectible, which gives you a randomly generated choice of power-ups that don’t make sense to a beginning player. This series of randomly generated choices feels a bit like Hades, except there’s no room for experimentation and you have to live with your choices for the entire game.
Still, Islets seems like it has potential, especially since the art is so good and the writing seems to be decent. Despite being somewhat annoying, the series of small one-screen rooms gives me a nostalgic Game Boy vibe that I think I might be able to enjoy more fully if I knew what I was doing. Islets is the only game on this list that I’m planning on coming back to eventually, preferably after Neoseeker (or someone to that effect) publishes a nice text-based walkthrough to help me get started.
