Connor Nichols's Reviews
Serious Scramblers was really fun in spots and gave a good glimpse into how this experience could be refined into an addictive time waster. Unfortunately, the slow lack of variety along with the lack of a vertical mode in a game screaming for it makes Serious Scramblers something that I can only really recommend if you’re into short and cheap experiences, rather than as an addictive arcade-like time chaser.
La-Mulana 2 is an excellent sequel to the original masterpiece. The combat is still just as satisfying as before, the puzzles aren’t nearly as cryptic but are still fun to solve, and the adventure is a fun one overall! My only real gripe is that it does have a slow start, unlike the first game, since it tries to ease the player in before opening up to the same sort of glorious open-ended exploration that made the first game magnificent, yet it’s still a great adventure with lots of different ways to replay it.
Tamiku easily nailed all the sweet spots I look for in a scorechaser: addictive gameplay loops, simple controls, trial and error, it’s all here, and Tamiku does a godly job with it all, to the point I honestly believe this could be made into a NES homebrew game due to just how authentic it feels! The only real gripes I have with Tamiku are a few: one being that I do wish the game would have an endless, randomized mode that would shuffle the order of stages around, and the other being that the lack of online leaderboards is a real shame, especially due to how this game’s practically screaming for them.
In conclusion, Warlock’s Tower is a simple, yet brilliant logic game with fun puzzles to enjoy during the 100 stage journey. It’s a simple concept that sticks to simplicity while not feeling repetitive nor hastily thrown together, the stages where you swap between characters are a ton of fun as well, and overall Warlock’s Tower is a Game Boy Puzzler tribute done justice, something that I was very pleased to see for a game I didn’t have much expectations for.
Golf Zero is a pretty fun and creative physics platformer, with a good amount of challenge and fun levels to play through! But the experience overall is rather short, and outside of doing all the gold medal or speedrun challenges, the game just doesn’t evolve into a replayable experience.
Lapis X Labyrinth is an incredibly average hack and slash with not much going for it. You enter a dungeon, beat up enemies, gain new weapons, loot and skills, and then repeat ad nauseam with little incentive to keep going or play this for long bursts at a time. On Switch, at least you do have pick up and play possibilities, but I found even when playing this game in those sessions, it just wasn’t that engaging.
Reason is a Sokoban game… That does the absolute bare minimum. The puzzles are fine, the game controls OK, but at the end of the day, that’s all that Reason provides. There’s no charm, no clever twist, no good looking visuals or assets, no good music, nothing of interest beside block pushing with a cute robot for fifty levels, in a format that you’ve probably done before. If you like these kinds of games, it works OK for more content of this type, but considering how there have been other Sokoban-likes on the eShop already, I just suggest you buy a prettier one like Box Land Demake instead, even though this is easily one of the more affordable takes on the genre, being only a dollar.
While Foxyland 2 is still a pretty basic platformer, it’s clear that the devs took the feedback from the first game and greatly expanded upon it: No longer needing to force gem collecting, hiding some clever secret coins around each stage, introducing secret exits, better level design, and more interesting boss fights all contribute to a fun experience all around, and with co-op this game can actually be a pretty engaging experience!
In conclusion, Foxyland was a very mediocre platformer, with only a good art style to note as any positive. The gameplay is boring, the gem requirement is stupid, and the levels aren’t that fun to play. Oddly enough, the halloween levels were more engaging than the main game, but the fact they don’t even record the stars you get and seemingly don’t save your progress for completing them makes that level pack feel utterly pointless. This is a done to death, mobile quality experience that if you’re familiar with, you probably don’t even need to give this a glance. It’s basic platforming bogged down by frustrating mechanics.
For a very, very short RPG, Archlion Saga was surprisingly enjoyable. The pacing was pretty good for the length of the game, the combat was simple enough to be entertaining while not too mindless, and there’s still some strategy to be had during the course of the five chapter adventure. I can’t help but find that Hit-Point still nailed their gameplay and presentation despite the shortness of the game, and the fact the whole experience was enjoyable and fun from start to finish is worth noting too. If you have funds to spend, Archlion Saga isn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon.
Arc of Alchemist is a catastrophic disaster on Switch. The game dips and climbs in framerate constantly, the visuals are so downgraded that it can be difficult to even make out key aspects, and the experience is overall miserable. There is a decent enough action RPG buried under all of this, but the abysmal performance should have never been accepted for release, and I’m outright ashamed they thought this port was in a good state to release, and haven’t fixed it since.
Chronus Arc is indeed a more dated RPG from Hit-Point. Yet, a lot of the tropes and common things that you have seen in a bunch of other Kemco RPGs are here, with crafting, quests, and material gathering, along with building your skills up and learning magic. The gameplay loop of Chronus Arc is well-balanced enough that the battles are fun, but the block puzzles can get a bit tiresome after a while, and the fact you’ll have to enter and exit certain dungeons to grind for materials at times can be pretty boring, so it’s not really that engrossing compared to Hit-Point’s newer titles, though I did notice that Chronus was quite a bit tougher than most of the other Kemco RPGs I played, which may be a plus for those who tend to find these games too easy.
Land Wars is a fun spinoff in the Super Destronaut series, offering some scorechasing entertainment and a perfect entry point for FPS newcomers! The easier difficulties can be a bit repetitive, and the challenges can sometimes feel as if they take way, way too long, but otherwise you have yet another solid, enjoyable scorechaser from the minds at Petite Games, and while I think DX gets the nudge over this one for better pick up and play purposes, this is still a solid choice for scorechaser fans. I just wish there were online leaderboards here, as that would have greatly increased this game’s worth.
Summer with the Shiba Inu is a pretty unimpressive Visual Novel, with an uninteresting story, poor presentation, and an unsatisfying payoff with little in terms of drastic choices that made me feel as if I wasted my hour with the original route I took. When a visual novel feels like it’s filled with filler and uninteresting events without much of a hook, and doesn’t properly explain some things, it just falls apart like paper at the end of the day, and unfortunately, that’s how Summer felt for me.
Slayin 2 was a great time, both solo, and in co-op! Whichever way you play, the story mode offers plenty of fun unlockables and secrets, adding lots of replay value to the mix. The arcade mode also serves as a decent means of scorechasing, but without a local or online leaderboard, it feels a lot more shallow than such a mode deserves to be, though at least each character can have their own highscore.
Singled Out is a very simplistic score chaser, and while the core loop is fun and enjoyable, there’s not much else to the game besides thirty levels of identifying people and a boss. While there are in-game achievements to unlock, they’re pretty straightforward and not that interesting, and this game actually makes me wish for some sort of competitive local multiplayer mode, where you and a friend could rush to identify the culprit first for a bit more variety, since as it stands right now there’s little to do once that magic wears off.
In conclusion, Vitamin Connection was a game with tons of charm, using the joycons to their maximum potential for a unique co-op experience. While the main game is very playable solo, it doesn’t feel nearly as fun or as polished as a co-op title. It may use some gimmicks I’m not fond of such as motion controls, but I can’t deny that it led to a unique shooting experience overall. It was harder to play this game in co-op than I had anticipated, since I had to put it on hold for a long while due to the current health crisis, but now that I was able to give it several lengthy afternoons in co-op, it felt natural, and I’m confident in saying that Vitamin Connection is a quirky, charming co-op experience that’s a must-own. As a solo experience however, the game is pretty dull, and while it’s very handy to use normal controls for some of the trickier things like shooting enemies or using the claw, it just feels way more fluid with the co-op method of controls, which is something I never thought I’d say due to my general distain for motion gimmicks.
Ghost Grab 3000 is a pretty damn fun scorechaser, from the mind behind the excellent Switch n Shoot. While I prefer that game a tad more over this, Ghost Grab is still a super engaging game with fun score mechanics and a bit more replay value thanks to an upgrade shop, online leaderboards, and in-game achievements. You may very well see everything this game has to offer in around an hour if the game gels with you and you get good at it, but the payoff for big chains is just oh so satisfying, and this easily scratches the arcade itch way more than a bunch of the other games I’ve covered lately that tried doing the same sort of tribute. Two for two in terms of good retro arcade throwbacks isn’t bad, and hopefully this encourages Matt to keep up the great work, as I’m definitely excited to see what other ideas he has up his sleeve.
For three dollars, Get 10 Quest should have been a great portable addition to the Switch’s catalogue, but while the core concept is decent, it doesn’t do too much besides the bare minimum. The puzzle mode is a decent addition for a tiny bit of replay value, but the lack of anything else besides it and the endless mode, especially one without leaderboards, makes Get 10 Quest a dull puzzler you’re not likely to boot up to fill an addictive craving.
Hoggy 2 is a puzzler that’s generic in every sense of the word. Generic presentation, generic assets, generic levels, generic feel, and a generic concept that has been done many times before in many other flash and mobile games. I can’t really say much else about this, since it seems silly to have such a game cost $5 to begin with, especially with oddities like a pointless level editor. It’s weird to think that I hoped this would end up being a fun, brief puzzler, but when it’s so boring and something that makes me question what I’m doing with my free time, that’s a big problem.