Beasties is a very casual and easy game offering little challenge that reminds me of a mobile game. While playing it for review, I kept waiting for something fantastic to happen in the game. Say, for instance, a surprise twist in the storyline or an extra area to explore as there is only one area, a forest. Sadly that never happened. I battled and caught a few beasties and visited all three stalls in the village: a beastie trainer, a blacksmith to mend your only tool and a healer. After nearly three hours of play, I finished the game and watched the credits roll. For the game’s price you don’t get much for your money, and it is over in a flash. Unfortunately, the game’s storyline also isn’t that great, and like the game itself, it ends abruptly.
While I played through the fifty levels of Cube Decider, I did enjoy the game for a while. It is not the worse game out there, but on the other hand, it is not the best game either. However, for a couple of pounds in the eShop, I’d still be hesitant to recommend it as it left me with a feeling off…. well, that it was kind of pointless after finishing it.
Unfortunately, As Far As The Eye felt like work playing it. For me, strategy games tread a line between letting you execute a satisfying plan and responding to surprise threats. However, with As Far As The Eye’s constant violent natural disasters and the need for upkeep on every game element, it gets quite tiresome to always be on the defensive and rush to the next Halt. A strategy game should encourage long play sessions with lots of deep planning of your next move and not having to rush because of some threat you have no control over. Apart from that, when you die, there isnt any post-game analysis, recorded stats, or even the ability to scroll the map and see where you went wrong and learn from it. All of that makes me think that hex-based strategy and roguelike genres should not be mixed together in a game!
LOVE – A Puzzle Box Filled with Stories is a short game, I completed it in well under an hour. That brings me to another niggle I have with the game. At the full price of £19.99/$19.99/€19,99 the game is way overpriced for what you get. Yes, it does have an interesting mechanism of moving the room around but the novelty of that soon wears off when you are not that connected to the characters in the game. The music in the game is lovely but again it’s something that you like the first time but not when you hear it constantly on repeat. On a side note, LOVE – A Puzzle Box Filled with Stories is on sale in the eShop until 7th November, so if you do want to try it out now would be a good time to purchase it.
Elva the Eco Dragon is primarily aimed at children. It is meant to help teach them about the environment and how to treat the planet better. I’m having such a difficult time deciding a score for the game. While I have looked at the game through a child’s eye, I can’t overlook the messy interface on the Switch. Nor the little dragon getting frozen in mid-flight or getting stuck in the scenery. The game has an appropriate theme for today’s world and it is admirable that the developer is trying to teach children about looking after the earth, but I don’t think they have hit that mark correctly!
If you have read this review up till now, I thank you, you will probably have guessed by reading the review that I am not about to give Dice Legacy a really high score. The UI and the game’s lack of a proper tutorial need a lot of improvements to receive a higher score than..
I think King’s Bounty II falls down slightly in its core game design. Especially the narrative and the RPG elements of it feel stifled and a grind. To me, King’s Bounty II feels like a game that wants to take inspiration from titles like The Witcher 3 with new discoveries and adventures around every corner. But it doesn’t quite hit the mark with its mediocre storyline and wooden characters and semi-linear world. The combat, while tough and unforgiving, I did find enjoyable as I like a good challenge. King’s Bounty II is one of those games I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it one way or the other as it has as many good points as bad points so for that reason King’s Bounty II scores…
I’d like to tell you that CyberHive is a wonderful strategy game. But I can’t say that it is, neither can I say it’s a really terrible game. What I can say is I would steer clear of CyberHive until the game receives an update as in my opinion, you won’t be getting a playable game. Yes, the game does play but only up until the point where it freezes. And like me, you will spend your playtime replaying chapter one over and over again. So I’m left with no choice but to score CyberHive as,
Once you do get into a pattern of making potions and completing the quests Alchemist Simulator is quite fun. I love the premise of Alchemist Simulator, who doesn’t want to be an Alchemist. However, with controls that feel like they have been lifted straight from a PC game. The tutorial doesn’t prepare the player with enough information on the ins and outs of brewing potions, which is a pity as underneath the faults the gameplay could be interesting. At the moment, the way the game is
Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead has lots of new components added to the game, some of them are fun and work well. While I did enjoy the added feature of the Walkers to the game as they do add in a lot of extra strategies to think through. However, not all of the components work as well as they should and it ends up being annoying. Especially the controls which I found to be downright irritating. If you can manage the irritating controls and have played the Bridge Constructor games before you may well like this instalment!
Unhatched is a mobile game ported to the Switch, thankfully without the advertising or IAP that plagues most mobile games. I did enjoy some of the card battles but it does get repetitive pretty quickly and a lot of the battles are trial and error as I’ve said. The story wasn’t interesting enough to keep me engaged for long. I like strategy and puzzle games, and while I don’t dislike Unhatched there are better games at the same price to choose from in the eShop.
Overall Detective Case and Clown Bot in: Murder in The Hotel Lisbon is passable as a point and click game. The risqué humour that can range from silly to controversial would be a matter of choice on the players part, provided they find it acceptable in this day and age! As for myself, you may have gathered by now I did not like the humour in the game. So my score for Detective Case and Clown Bot in: Murder in The Hotel Lisbon is..I’m Not Sure
I had been looking forward to playing Ary and the Secret of Seasons since the game was announced. Unfortunately, I’m left feeling disappointed in the game. I do like the swapping of seasons mechanic to solve the puzzles. Once the game is updated and if the glitches are successfully removed I do think Ary and the Secret of Seasons would make a great family game for the whole family to play together. As the game is at the moment with its frequent framerate drops, stuttering and glitches which actually put you off playing the game. I can’t, in all honesty, recommended it as a fun and entertaining experience currently.
I’m slightly disappointed in The Great Perhaps. The game expands no further on Kosmos’ feelings that lead to his declaration at the start of the game of not wanting to live. I think it’s a missed opportunity. The non-responsive controls when switching off the lantern can quickly turn into a very frustrating experience, while watching Kosmos die through no fault of your own. The story, while interesting, comes to an abrupt halt at the end of the 3 hours or so it takes to complete the game. I guess that leaving the story on a cliffhanger at the end leaves the door open for a Great Perhaps 2. We shall have to wait and see on that one.
Dread Nautical has a Lovecraftian horror theme, though it’s subtle it’s there. There certainly wasn’t anything in the game that I found to be scary as such, maybe a little bit more horror added to it would help in this area. The core gameplay goes round in a loop, start the day, roam the decks, find resources, and try to survive. After a few runs I found this got boring pretty quickly, there isn’t much variety in the style of the decks on the ship and after a while they all feel much the same. The tactical combat is nothing unusual that hasn’t been seen before and I recommend looking else where if that is the genre you’re looking to play.
In Help Will Come Tomorrow the basic concepts of survival are straightforward enough: camp, heat, water, but the greater challenge will be dealing with prejudice and class conflicts between the game’s characters. The game suffers from not explaining some of the actions well enough to the player, and of course the small writing that I’ve already mentioned doesn’t help in that area. Long load times as the game starts up are also a problem when your waiting to get into the gameplay. Be prepared to have all your camp survivors die, as it’s not an easy game. I’m even wondering if it’s possible to survive, as I’ve never managed to get the camp to survive until help comes. If you’re new to the genre I would look elsewhere for a easier game to start with.
Ember is about as old school RPG as can be, it has touches of most of the elements of RPG though on a smaller scale and not as in-depth. For a player that has never played an RPG it would be a good introduction game for them. However what I have written above would only be recommended if Ember had received an update as in its present performance state of shutting down and stuttering during play I can’t recommend it to anyone. I’d be disappointed if I had bought Ember with the way it preforms at the moment.
Originally released a few years ago on PC, World of Magic Planar Conquest has now been released on the Nintendo Switch. A 4X strategy game which for those that don’t know stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate with the games goal to Explore the world around you, I feel the five minute tutorial isn’t long enough to equip the player with the knowledge they need to play this style of game. If you’re trying the 4X genre for the first time this is not the game to start with, otherwise you will loose interest in it before you’re completed the first game. For those that have played this genre before you might find something you like in World of Magic Planar Conquest.
In the year 2590AD the Atlas corporation is excavating for crystals in an asteroid which is orbiting Earth. Something horrendous has gone wrong in the asteroid and it’s orbital correction has been disabled. The Technosphere is the only hope to reload the asteroid system and restore its orbit around earth before disaster strikes and wipes out Earth and all its inhabitants…..and one other tiny detail: you have 10 hours to succeed in saving Earth. Yes that’s right 10 hours….. that certainly add’s a sudden sense of urgency to the gameplay. Nice enough gameplay until the glitch...
Paragon Pioneers 2 is an idle simulation ideal for patient players who enjoy making small changes and returning later to see the larger effects. However, I’m not a particularly patient person, and while I took delight upon returning to Paragon Pioneers 2, seeing that my little pioneers had been busy at work during the time I was absent, I’m not into idle gameplay. I much prefer to play a game and see the effects there and then. But for those players who enjoy idle gameplay, Paragon Pioneers 2 is definitely a game to try either on PC or mobile.