If you are looking for a stroll down Mega Man-memory lane, Venture Kid offers a solid nostalgia trip down the side streets of the genre's general neighborhood. Platforming feels tuned to the best examples of the era. Taking heavy influence from classic NES titles, Venture Kid captures the 8-bit age with pitch perfection, even if it misses the mark in other places.
Garage: Bad Trip is every 1980s action horror flick power fantasy wrapped up in a bloody retroware wrapper. It tries to balance it's graphic gore with classic tropes and it's suspense with moments of the ridiculous, but leans heavily into its Splatterpunk influences. While its controls are tight for a twin stick shooter, Garage: Bad Trip has some mechanical bugs which diminish the overall experience.
Bladed Fury attempts to tell a tale from Chinese legend, but exiles itself into the realm of the unremarkable with several missteps. Combat is not terribly deep and the precision strike system is no implemented well, though the Soul Sliver system adds a unique touch to it. While the sound design encapsulates eastern inspiration, the art design struggles to find footing in one place.
RIOT: Civil Unrest seeks to share both sides of global events of upheaval. While it is presented in masterfully crafter low fidelity pixel art, the controls on the Nintendo Switch are simply lacking in the care and finesse the rest of the game shows. If you are going to check it out, we would highly recommend the PC platform over the Switch.
While gameplay on the Switch is poorly optimized, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is (to steal a Symphony of the Night meme) more than a "miserable pile of secrets." In its purest form, it is worthy of Koji Igarashi's legacy and will live on as a strong representation of the genre he helped birth. With matured mechanics with the shards system, options for varied play styles, and the edition of quests, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will join the ranks of high quality Metroidvania titles worth replaying over and over again.
If you are looking for a 2D dungeon crawler with some rogue-lite options, Sword of the Necromancer might just scratch that itch, but for me the legend didn't quite live up to what I had hoped.
Whatever direction can you go, I can say this: It’s less expensive than Space Camp. Go get yourself one of those freeze-dried ice cream bars, strap a Kerbal or two to some rockets, and call it good.
Claybook puts the players into a world of clay creation and imagination to solve puzzles while getting your hands dirty. Its vibrant, whimsical colors and designs evoke a child-like wonder for creation over the course of its twenty levels, but it falls short by gating content behind an ambiguous rating system.
Gray Dawn is true to its description of being a psychological thriller with religious elements, but it can't seem to focus in on which religious elements it wants to portray.
OlliOlli: Switch Stance is a 2D skateboarding simulator that refuses to lie to its players. You will struggle and you will experience pain. It is going to be difficult, but if you can pull it off, it can be incredibly satisfying… even if the execution of such tricks involved a healthy heaping of dumb luck and/or divine intervention.
Lonely In The Winter is a turn-based JPRG that falls a bit short of where it could be. With poorly optimized moments which cause frame rates to tank and a story that feels inconclusive, it feels like an Early Access title more than a completed project. That being said, the story does have some potential if it were fleshed out more. If you are looking for a JRPG, but want to be limitedly invested, Lonely In The Winter is not a bad evening distraction.
Lucky is adorable and his world is full of wonder, but the lack of diverse controller options along with poor camera handling make this game less than excellent.