David Temple
If you're down with OCD, (yeah, you know me,) Faircroft's Antiques: Home for Christmas Collector's Edition will keep you staring at the screen for a while. It may feel a little more appropriate around Christmas time, but fans of hidden object games will find it plays well enough any time.
Kingdom Tales 2 is almost the exact same thing as its predecessor, making it a decent simulation strategy game regardless of whether you played the original. There's no real incentive to play both, but fans of the genre will find enjoyment in at least one of them.
If you like resource management sims, Kingdom Tales is a fun game that's safe for any age. For those who are even mildly down with OCD (yeah, you know me), it can be a compelling exercise in keeping all the wheels spinning and playing all the levels to the end.
SYNTHETIK: Ultimate provides a good old-fashioned shoot-'em-all with plenty of tactical difficulty. There are enough levels, avatar classes, and weapons to keep a gamer busy for a fair number of hours. The game could stand some controls and training improvement, but it is a worthy action/arcade entry.
Great Conquerer: Rome may not be the best tactical sim out there, but it's a solid game that's fun to play. It offers plenty of tasks to perform, places to see, enemies to kill, and territories to conquer, placing its strategy gaming value well above the asking price.
Metamorphosis is a good puzzle/adventure game with some platformer elements, but it fails to take the experience quite as far as it could. If you are into the surreal, consider it a solid option for a little creative time-wasting on your Nintendo Switch.
Although Star Horizon could really use some more levels to stretch out its short story, if you are generally OK with on-rail space shooters, this game is generally OK. I can't say it is great, but it is a good game and should keep your trigger finger happy for a few hours.
If you like a puzzle game where patterns and timing are critical, then you will like Cyber Protocol. With 100 levels to keep you busy for many hours, it's a pretty good value for the money (especially at the sale price of $2.99 at the time this was published). If puzzle games with picky timing and perfect patterns frustrate you, however, then you may want to keep looking. You've almost reached your decision gate and I can't spare you any more time. End of line.
The graphics, the driving mechanics, the tracks, the vehicles, and the play time in Asphalt 9: Legends are all very good. The game is fun to play and challenging enough to keep the player engaged. However, the micro-transactions and some frame-rate issues do interfere with the overall experience.
Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast is a bit of a grind at the beginning, but if you can endure the first part then the game will open up into Jedi Force battles and light saber combat which will make all the Star Wars fans happy. For the cost of the game (currently only $9.99), it's worth putting in your rotation.
The Forbidden Arts is a nice indie studio entry for the Switch and good for at least 12 hours of gameplay. I say "at least" because if you play like me you will probably get a couple of extra hours out of it (refer to the finicky jumping bits above). It doesn't have all the polish of a big studio game, but it has heart.
Murtop is an '80s arcade throwback that will challenge your reactions and sense of timing in a whimsical (bordering on endearingly silly) world. It is sometimes frustrating working through a level to get things just right, but that's the nature of the game. It's a good dose of idle time fun for almost all ages.
Trifox is a fun action platformer that allows you to choose the type of character you play as. Although there are a couple of concerns with floaty physics and a rigid camera, but they are outweighed by fun fights, clever puzzles, and vibrant visuals.
The retro point-and-click adventure game, Unusual Findings, is full of puzzles, colorful characters, sometimes odd conversation, and aliens-what more could you ask for? Our heroes share some witty banter, get into all sorts of trouble, and get to save the world, if they are successful.
Cotton Fantasy: Superlative Night Dreams is a bit pricey for the time it takes to get to the end. However, it's a shoot-em-up. It's not about getting through a story, it's about shooting baddies and getting a high score. Fans of shmups (and of the recently revitalized Cotton in particular) will have some fun with this one.
Castle Morihisa is a deck-building strategy game with plenty of pros and only a few cons. The cons do not weigh so heavily that the game isn't fun. It isn't the best at everything it tries to do (most which you've seen before), but it is an enjoyable game.
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is a great game. I would like to give it top marks, but in spite of all the good design elements, cool soundtrack, and very good dialogue and voice acting, the Switch's cloud version connection issues are a problem I can't just overlook.
As a single player game, the arcade racer Crash Drive 3 can feel a bit empty. But it'll very likely be a real hoot for the kids who just want to explore and goof around. As a multiplayer game, it can be a free-for-all blast.
As a grid-based, first-person, action/adventure RPG, Vaporum: Lockdown offers plenty of gameplay elements to keep you busy. The dungeon-crawling game play is straightforward and not overly complicated, despite a good number of puzzles sprinkled in. In short, this is a solid prequel to the original Vaporum. Have fun exploring.
Sisters Royale is a colorful, tongue-in-cheek take on the classic shmup format. On the upside, you get to play through the game as five different player characters. The down side is it doesn't take very long to play through, so the replay value is in trying to beat your last score and to run through the levels on harder settings.