With so many games styled as ‘2D Metroidvania platformers’, any title hoping to make even the smallest of impact these days needs a USP that really makes it stand out from the crowd. A striking art style. An engaging and original story. New and innovative mechanics. Just something. Sadly, just being a decent and enjoyable addition to the genre often isn’t enough to avoid disappearing into the rapidly-expanding eShop void.
This is the problem Omega Strike is constantly struggling with. It’s a game that’s been made just fine. The soundtrack pops with the kind of wistful chiptune vibe that instantly gets your feet tapping, its retro-esque visuals doff the cap firmly at the likes of Metal Slug and the platforming and shooting bits jump and shoot just as they should. The problem is, all those well-made bits are lacking that vital spark that elevates the game above the competition.
There is a certain something Omega Strike hopes will give it that extra sprinkle of magic, but it’s neither new nor the best example you can find on Nintendo Switch. The titular outfit consists of three characters, who you can switch between at the touch of a button to make the most of their unique skills. Sarge is your all-rounder, with a machine gun that has a high rate of fire and modest range. Dex has a shotgun for short-range carnage and can double-jump to reach higher platforms. Then there’s Bear, who boasts a grenade launcher and the power to move heavy objects.
Each one can also upgrade to achieve an extra ability, such as Sarge’s roll, which enables him to move through narrow tunnels to reach new areas. It’s the only ‘thing’ Omega Strike really has to sell itself beyond the open-ended exploration and side-scrolling gunplay, so it’s a little odd that the game decides to remove the ability to switch between your crew early on. You start off so well, switching between your trio of mutant-bashing heroes, only to forced into playing solo as Sarge for a little too long.
Once you do eventually reunite the team, there’s very little impetus to swap between teammates while exploring each level, other than the necessity to exploit Dex’s double-jump or Bear’s bouncing grenade launcher. Compared to something like Broforce (which also uses a character-swapping mechanic) or Not a Hero: Super Snazzy Edition (which sold itself on a growing squad of foul-mouthed killers) Omega Strike’s trio lack any real personality. They’re functional, just not particularly fun.
With no XP bars to fill or special loot to collect (collectables are resigned to gold coins/skulls and red squares that can be used to increase your overall health) or the usual roguelike elements that make runs that bit more intense, Omega Strike too often has to rely on that overly-familiar platforming and shooting to keep itself interesting. Of course, there’s always going to be a certain thrill to filling in a map, discovering new rooms and killing everything in sight, but with very little risk and not much reward beyond spending your gold on gun upgrades, you’re simply left wanting more.
That said, there are some highlights to be enjoyed here. You can explore many of its open-ended 2D levels in any order you like, enabling you to reform your team and grind for gold/health squares at your own pace. Each of its locales (ranging from a lush forest sat atop warren-like caves to a danger-filled mining station) has a unique look, complete with a host of foes to vanquish and a final boss to dispatch. Omega Strike’s personality really comes out in the design of these foes, with everything from chainsaw-wielding mutants to projectile-flinging tentacles all vying to stop the team for good.
The bosses themselves aren’t particularly challenging (you can use health kits and items bought from the central hub of Tumbleweed, and these items don’t disappear even if you die and restart at a checkpoint) but they’re all designed to push you to use the tactics you’ve learned throughout the current level. Again, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, and if you’re expecting Mega Man levels of difficulty then you’re likely to be disappointed. Much like the rest of the game, these big bads offer a simple, inoffensive experience at best.
Conclusion
Omega Strike is a fun and enjoyable little 2D Metroidvania with some side-scrolling shooter sensibilities. It doesn’t do anything particularly new or interesting – and its ‘unique’ character-swapping concept was done a lot better by Broforce – but if you’re looking for a modern tribute to Metal Slug that’s fun and challenging in a very familiar way, then Omega Strike is likely to scratch that common itch. Just keep those expectations in check as this isn’t the most original or exciting example the genre has to offer.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf is arguably one of the most addictive games on the planet, slowly but surely sucking you in until you can’t go more than a day or two without checking in on the adorable little critters roaming around inside your 3DS. Many of us will no doubt be guilty of putting unhealthy amounts of time into the game, but this little story really goes to show how enjoyable – and time-consuming – Animal Crossing can really be.
Twitter user @phubans has shared the following image on the site, revealing that his 87-year-old grandma has played the game for over 3,580 hours. We’ve done the maths, and that’s almost 150 full days’ worth of playtime. The tweet says that she has played the game every single day for the past four years, seemingly since Christmas 2014, with the software being booted up 2,521 times.
In response to other users sharing their amazement and admiration for his grandma, @phubans has also revealed that her in-game hobbies include the “daily village chores, like hitting rocks, digging up fossils, etc”. Some users have even asked to see photos of her and befriend her in the game, and the aim now is to save up to buy her a Switch in time for Animal Crossing 2019.
We’re sure you’ll agree that this is one cracking effort, and we’re glad to see someone get so much fun from the game. Here’s to 5,000!
Publishing company Super Rare Games, known for releasing indie favourites in physical form on Nintendo Switch, is launching a Super Rare Club Membership which hopes to “remove any potential stress associated with purchasing items” from the store.
As any collectors of physical Nindies will know, securing each and every one of the titles made available through sites like Super Rare Games and Limited Run Games can be incredibly difficult; often, thanks to each release’s limited number of units, you can still find yourself empty-handed even after putting the game in your online basket the second it goes on sale. This membership is hoping to change that, giving you early access to sales and providing you with “exclusive” information.
– Access to all products 48 hours before their general release dates – Priority shipping: we will send your games out before anyone else – Be part of a secret mailing list and receive inside information and exclusive game announcements – Added to a secret Discord server containing other members and also the Super Rare Team – Entered into monthly competitions to win special items and signed copies of games – 25% discount on any purchased merchandise (one use only) – Premium packaging on all orders
As you might expect, the membership comes at a price, with £30 of your hard-earned cash being required to join. For that £30, you’ll be covered from 1st February 2019 until 31st January 2020, gaining all of the benefits mentioned above. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, you can purchase a membership right here.
Does this sound like a good idea to you, or do you think the benefits aren’t worth the extra money? Let us know in the comments.
The future is looking bright for Natsume fans, as the game publisher reveals that “several new titles” are currently in development following the success of Harvest Moon: Light of Hope Special Edition.
The news comes from a blog post shared by Natsume Inc president, Hiro Maekawa. In the post, Maekawa mentions that 2018 was “one of the best years” for Natsume in recent history, thanking loyal fans for the continued support, and that the latest Harvest Moon title had even set a new sales record.
“We released our latest entry in the Harvest Moon franchise, Harvest Moon: Light of Hope Special Edition in May for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. The title performed well beyond our forecast and even set new sales record with the number of both physical and digital combined.”
He goes on to mention that the game actually performed well across all platforms, from Switch to PS4 and on smartphone devices, too, before teasing some future announcements. If you’re interested, you can read the full post for yourself here.
“We are currently working on several new titles that will be announced in the near future, to continue to please our worldwide fans in 2019 and beyond.”
Natsume Inc president Hiro Maekawa
Would you like to see more Harvest Moon action on Nintendo Switch? Perhaps you’d like to see something entirely new from the company? Feel free to share your hopes with us below.
If you’re hoping to grab one last festive bargain, now would definitely be the time to do it as Nintendo of Europe’s mega Festive Offers sale is about to come to an end.
There are some particularly juicy offerings available across Nintendo Switch, 3DS, and Wii U, such as FIFA 19 for £27.49, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle for £14.99, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy for £22.79, Resident Evil Revelations for £4.79 (on 3DS and Wii U), and many, many more. Across the festive season, over 700 games saw discounts, many of which are still available until tomorrow.
Nintendo has actually been adding more and more titles to the sales list in stages across the last few weeks. We have complete sales lists for all three weeks below if you’re interested, alongside their discount expiry dates (some games featured are no longer on sale, but some actually have discounts that go beyond the official Festive Offers dates). Alternatively, you can also visit Nintendo’s site directly via the link in the tweet above.
As 2019 dawns and gamers the world over wake up after New Year celebrations, Fitness Boxing arrives in time to take advantage of resolutions to get in shape. From the moment it boots up, anyone who’s ever baulked at their BMI beside a frowning Mii or stamped an onscreen calendar following a daily workout will feel right at home. The branding may be missing but this very clearly belongs to Wii Fit’s ‘exergaming’ lineage; everything from its green menu fonts to progress-tracking bar charts feels comfortingly familiar.
There’s no need to dust off the Balance Board this time, though; slide off those Joy-Con and you’re good to go. This has necessitated some simplification and Fitness Boxing’s learned a thing or two from a certain Ubisoft dance series. In fact, it feels like Wii Fit and Just Dance met at a party, drank some Dance Dance Revolution and – boom! – nine months later found themselves the proud parents of a little rhythm-fitness game.
It’s a more streamlined and straight-laced experience than before; the lack of Balance Board or plastic doohickeys means no tobogganing, penguin-flipping or other such Mii-based frivolities – this is Fitness Boxing. It’s positioned more as a lifestyle app – software to tide you over while you’re on holiday and can’t get to your Body Combat class – and in that capacity, we have to say it works rather well.
Using a monkey-like grip on your two detached Joy-Con, your thumbs rest along the ‘L’ and ‘R’ buttons. Icons travel up two vertical lanes into target zones indicating when to throw a punch. Following a rather slow introduction, a variety of HD rumble-enhanced jabs, straights, hooks, uppercuts and ducks make things much more interesting. A handy timer lets you know how much time remains in each section. You score points for landing combos highlighted in pink and your total is totted up at the end giving you a maximum three-star rating.
With no bulky peripherals required, the motion data available to developer Imagineer is somewhat limited and it’s unclear exactly how much of your movement input is registered. Queensberry rules prohibit kicks, so there’s no need to stuff Joy-Con down your socks. Handily, this reduces the number of pop-up disclaimers, too – a real blessing after all those Wii Fit warning screens. (Does anybody actually bother with those straps?)
Each workout is done to the beat of a chart-topper. A lean 20-tracklist unlocks as you complete sessions and includes instrumental versions of winners like ‘Call Me Maybe’ and ‘Moves Like Jagger’. A few vintage hits rub shoulders with the likes of Bieber, Pitbull and Lady Gaga; perennial favourite ‘Funkytown’ puts in an appearance, although the absence of the Rocky theme can only be down to a massive clerical error. The fact that we knew all the songs probably says something, but they add pep to your workouts and confident players can increase the speed of each track in Free Training. The word ‘instrumental’ may raise eyebrows, but with your trainer constantly barking instructions and encouragement, you really don’t miss Cristina Aguilera’s three-octave acrobatics while you’re in the zone.
Mirroring the set-up of a Boxercise class, you’re instructed to get bouncing, shifting your weight like a real fighter – 1, 2, 1, 2, forward, back, forward, back. Performing our finest Street Fighter idle animation with fists by our face, we felt ready to take on all-comers. Sure, ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ kinda killed the mood, but you can build your own playlist and the game does a good job of motivating you to keep your whole body moving. After inputting height and weight data, you can target specific muscle groups and set daily workout goals with durations between 15-45 minutes. Your ‘Fitness Age’ is calculated via some hazy computation (one-third motion analysis to two-thirds ‘Magic 8-ball’, it seems) but it’s as fun as ever to see what number it conjures.
Fitness Boxing gives your personal coach a makeover; the featureless mannequin from the box art is a ruse and the comically anodyne Wii Fit Trainer has been replaced here by the lovely Lin. For all her natty gym wear and skin pigmentation, though, she’s only a minor upgrade in terms of personality. We suppose she’s a tad more enthusiastic when you nail a combo, but Smash Bros. has given us a peculiar affection for her predecessor and Lin certainly isn’t amiibo material.
Following the tutorial, you can exchange her for one of five other trainers – three female, two male – each with individual names and voices. Custom garments unlock as your total-punches, stars and daily stamps are counted, with future gifts stretching out on the calendar for months and years. The models are a mixed bag and the women seem a little more polished (Bernardo’s body seems to be an HD copy-and-paste of Carl’s from GTA San Andreas). The ability to alter their eye, hair and skin colour feels a little odd, as do the zooming camera controls that permit you to examine tight polygonal glutes and thigh gap to your heart’s content.
Two-player mode lets you train in tandem with a partner, working together to chain combos or competing in a dreary VS mode where punches fill a meter until one player triumphs; the latter mode highlights the wisdom of focusing on fitness over ‘games’ this time around. Stretching sessions before and after each workout can be turned off, although we recommend keeping them; over-zealous air-punches can lead to the sorts of mischiefs Wii Sports did us back in ’06. Far be it to suggest that we’re anything other than the finest physical specimens here at NL, but we did wake up for several mornings with sore muscles under the shoulder blades.
And – yes – if you don’t fancy floating like a butterfly, it’s entirely possible to ‘cheat’; we found you could get by just fine on the sofa. It’s certainly easier to time those punches with your whole body moving back-and-forth, but playing while seated is an option if you’re unable (or unwilling) to stand. The game doesn’t seem to discriminate between X or Y axis movement, so hooks and uppercuts received ‘Perfect’ ratings regardless of direction, so long as timing was accurate.
Overall, it feels comparable to Just Dance in terms of accuracy – reliable enough to feel fair but we wouldn’t put too much faith in those ‘calories burned’ estimates. Just as paying for gym membership won’t magically gift you Jennifer Lawrence legs or Chris Hemsworth hamstrings, you’ll get out of Fitness Boxing what you put in. Once Nintendo’s pocketed your £39.99, the onus is on you to get into the spirit and use the software to its full potential. Tabletop mode means you can’t use being away from home as an excuse, either; it functions perfectly on the smaller screen, with text and icons large enough to follow with the console perched on a hotel room desk.
Conclusion
Within its common-sense (and, thanks to Wii Fit, well-known) limitations, Fitness Boxing is a breezy, energetic success that gets your blood pumping. For the one-time price of a month’s gym membership, it delivers some light CV and takes pointers from Just Dance and various rhythm games to provide a convenient and engaging workout. It’s no substitute for hard hours at the gym, but there’s certainly potential to tone up those arms and shed a few of the mince pies you put away while watching Groundhog Day over the holidays. It would be a mistake to buy this thinking you’re getting a game or some magical antidote to your spare tyre. However, it kept us coming back and if you’re after a reason to justify cancelling that direct debit to Gold’s, this is as good as anything you’ll find on a console.
A new year has hit us like a more-literal-than-usual gravy train, and suffice to say despite this happening every year, next year we promise we’ll be better.
Before then, it would no doubt do us – and anyone else who perhaps indulged a bit too much – some good to start of the new year proper; a healthier outlook could certainly make all the difference.
And as timely as that, in walks Fitness Boxing, a new exercise application for the Switch. It harkens back to the says of Wii Fit, where it’s not really a game, but more of a companion on your console. If you’re curious to see how the whole thing works, then make sure you check out the video above where we do just that with your hands and mouths and stuff.
After an absence for the holiday period, the Nindie Round Up is back for a double whammy this week to see you into the new year. Today’s entry gives us three puzzle games with varying degrees of quality in Solar Flux, Dreamwalkers and Bring Them Home; the standout title of the week, Rain World – a beautifully intricate platformer with some of the best 2D visuals ever seen; and finally, we round things off with Mech Rage – a fun shoot ’em up that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
And with that, let’s talk indies for one final time in 2018…
Starting off the trend of the many puzzlers this week, this space-themed gem provides a nice breath of fresh air by using the touchpad as its primary method of gameplay. Using your finger, you must shoot off a pod from a mother ship and then control the pod itself to collect plasma, which will then top up the sun and fire off a solar flare.
While the concept may be very simple, the execution is quite strong overall. The controls are a bit tough to get a handle on at first, but once you’re adjusted to them, they are manageable. The slow, methodical pace of the ships also works well with the somewhat clunky controls, leading to real ‘spacey’ feel – whether intentional or not. You’ll also manage fuel, shield strength, as well as time taken per level, in order to try and get the top score. The challenge is fair, though a three-star rating can be very challenging to reach and you’ll likely find yourself hitting the restart level button fairly often. The gameplay on the whole, however, is well thought out and will likely lead to cries of ‘just one more stage’ – something that many of its three-star level-based contemporaries can’t claim.
The visuals are a bit on the basic side. The ships, plasma, and suns all look fine, but aren’t exactly much to write home about. They’re serviceable and that’s about it. The soundtrack is quite nice, however, and helps to provide a relaxing, out-of-this-world atmosphere with its ambient sounds. Overall, Solar Flux is good verging on great; it does have a bit of a visual vacuum, but the gameplay – though difficult to get a handle on at first – makes up for this, with potentially addictive action.
Thumbs Up
Puzzler number two is the cartoonish, dream-based game Dreamwalker; though to be precise, it’s an action-puzzler. This one has you directing a chap through his dreams in order to reach the sun at the end of the stage by moving cloud blocks, navigating him through various hazards including alarm clocks and nightmares that will halt his progress.
Dreamwalker is another game that falls into the category of being suitable for smartphones, but lacks the substance to justify a full console release; it’s a fairly dull platform-puzzler that doesn’t really do anything new or inspired and feels awkward in its own skin. It’s also time-based, with a giant ticker at the top of the screen marking how much time you have left. In fairness, this can lead to increasingly frantic gameplay at times as more hazards appear forcing you to quickly rearrange platforms or risk being transported back to the start of the stage, but it just isn’t that engaging overall. It takes a special kind of game to make simple level-based puzzle gameplay consistently fun and interesting and, unfortunately, Dreamwalker doesn’t cut the mustard. Examples where the mustard is cut include this weeks’ entry Solar Flux, or the last Round Up’s entry of Conduct Together!.
The visuals are also dull, with a stock sounding soundtrack and typical Saturday morning cartoon style aesthetics that aren’t entirely pleasant to look at for extended periods of time. This, unfortunately, leads to a package that dooms Dreamwalker to mediocre obscurity; it’s fine, sure, and does what it does well enough to not be considered a terrible game, but the lack of anything particularly engaging or new makes it difficult to recommend for anything more than fifteen minutes of mind-numbing entertainment.
Thumbs Down
Our third and final puzzler today yet again ventures into space, this time in the form of a drone rescuing multicoloured astronauts to, well…bring them home. The gameplay is once again basic, but overall, the game serves to be more engaging than Dreamwalker and has a little more visual flair than Solar Flux.
Your goal involves transporting different coloured astronauts to portals, incorporating their different skills and requirements as well as the varied levels, in order to navigate to their end. For example, the red astronauts cannot be dropped from a great height, lest their rouge bodies crumble at the bottom. The green astronauts can be picked up and blue variations can push their comrades along after they themselves have had an initial nudge. This leads to a lot of outside-the-box thinking and a need to work out how to use each of them alongside your traditional puzzler fare like teleporters. This creates a lot of trial and error, however, which can become frustrating as you’ll find yourself restarting levels more often than not.
The visual style is also again, basic, but at least feels like it has a little more character and colour. The spacemen are sweet and easily identifiable, making you feel genuinely bad when you end up sending them to an accidental grisly death. Similar to Solar Flux, the soundtrack is relaxing and ambient, sounding like something you’d hear in a science museum. It doesn’t exactly make for hard-hitting action, but for the game’s purpose, it adds to the charm. Overall, Bring Them Home is a decent puzzler that manages to get the mind going and provides a decently chilled atmosphere. Like Dreamwalker, however, some may find it repetitive, with its simple gameplay only going so far.
Maybe
A beautifully refreshing change of pace from all of this week’s puzzling action, Rain World is a survival platformer that has you controlling a bizarrely endearing and unnamed creature, traversing an apocalyptic landscape in search of food that allows you to hibernate to survive the tsunami levels of ensuing rain. Your rodent like slug creature is sickeningly sweet and loveable; Pokéfans could consider him a blend of Pikachu and Slugma.
The basic gameplay revolves around surviving day after day by foraging for food and hibernating once you have enough to live off of. Then, you awake and do the same thing again, in an apocalyptic version of Groundhog Day to progress further along the map. This provides some wonderful exploration and free roaming; the game certainly doesn’t hold your hand. It does, however, also provide some cruel difficulty spikes due to the randomised nature of both food sources and enemies. Many opponents are cruelly difficult, with one-hit KO attacks galore and not a huge amount to defend yourself with. That said, the thrill of finding a new area of the beautiful map does somewhat make up for the tough gameplay, which can, unfortunately, devolve into grinding.
However, where Rain World might slightly fall down in terms of repetitive gameplay, it redeems itself in style, sound, and visual aesthetic. This is truly a beautiful game, reminiscent of other 2D indie beauties like Limbo or Ori and the Blind Forest, while also being totally unique and stunning to look at. The wordless opening art tiles set to the gorgeous soundtrack alone could work as a short film; it’s that good. Overall, Rain World is highly recommended as a piece of art, even just to check out its gorgeous visuals. Its gameplay is unforgiving, but not to the extent where it becomes unplayable. It certainly will take some devotion and time to get good at it, but with a world this beautiful, is that such a bad thing?
Thumbs Up
Mech Rage is meat-headed and silly and it knows it, earning it brownie points. It’s an endearing and carefree shoot ’em up with a stock, generic plot and some fairly good combat. You take control of a mech suit and are left to clear each room of alien invaders before progressing to the next room to rinse and repeat. It’s about as stock as you can get, but the B-movie style dialogue, overly macho directions on the menus, and stereotypical characters make it an enjoyably irreverent experience.
The gameplay is also stock, but is serviceable for what it intends to accomplish. As you’d expect, you’re armed with a basic infinite rapid-fire weapon and have access to various upgrades to a secondary weapon as well as other items, dashes, and the like. You’ll traverse a selection of stages on each floor and upgrade your gear between levels using your collected points. As you’d expect, it’s up to you to prioritise what kind of gear you’ll improve based on your preferences and current needs, giving it some variation and replay value. The gameplay itself is a little slow for a shoot ’em up and feels just a tiny bit shallow; it’s difficult to explain, but the control isn’t the smoothest of the genre and it all feels just a bit clunky. That said, it’s serviceable and can lead to some fun experimentation, particularly on the easy difficulty, which the game humorously scolds you for selecting.
Aesthetically, it’s fine but nothing special – a trait it shares with many games in this week’s Round Up. The visuals are a good example of this, with character models all being classic stereotypes and the main support, Alexa, acting as a clear parody of the device of her namesake, while also resembling other tutorial characters like Cortana from the Halo series. The soundtrack is also a bit uninspired, with the generic sci-fi military vibe again supporting the atmosphere of the rest of the game. To sum up, Mech Rage is a self-aware and amusing shoot ’em up that seems to relish being a parody of the space army trope. It isn’t the best shmup out there, but you might still find some fun with it.
Maybe
Will you be downloading the fantastic Rain World or any other games from this week’s offering? Let us know in the comments below…
We may well have just received the very first trailer for the upcoming film Pokémon The Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution, but there’s another 2019 Poké-movie also getting a little bit of love as we approach the new year.
Remember Detective Pikachu? Of course you do. The film is set to arrive in cinemas on 10th May 2019, bringing Pikachu and the gang to life in a way we’ve never seen before. Ryan Reynolds, who plays the comical and adorable Pikachu in the film, has shared this image of himself covered in little dots – the dots are used alongside motion capture technology to place any expressions and gestures he makes onto the animated Pikachu’s face.
If you want to see how this turns out for the final product – and also because we can’t help wanting to watch it all over again – we’ve included the official trailer for you below. If you’re interested, you can also check out a collection of character models and props which were used in the film, spotted at Legendary Entertainment’s headquarters.
Two very different Pokémon films arriving in the same year. 2019’s going to be a good one, huh?
The modern game industry seems to be obsessed with the idea of constantly pushing the higher limits of how much content can be packed into a game, with both AAA and indie developers constantly finding new ways of making games that are exhaustingly long. Often, this leads to inevitable repetitiveness – do we really need sixty variants of essentially the same mission? – which makes shorter, but tighter games feel more satisfying. However, there’s another side of this spectrum in which a game is too short, leaving the player feeling like it was over much too soon, and this is unfortunately where we would class Donut County. If you can get past the short runtime, though, you’ll find a delightfully funny and inventive experience that’s sure to be memorable.
Donut County opens with a simple premise following the texting conversation between Mira, a young girl, and BK, a talking raccoon, as they discuss work life at a local donut shop. The girl complains about a loud neighbor during this conversation, and hardly a moment later, a mysterious hole appears in the ground that takes the loud neighbor and everything surrounding him. Moments later, we learn that the hole is being controlled via BK’s phone app, and the narrative quickly jumps forward to the near future in which the entire town – including Mira and BK – are trapped at the bottom of that omnipresent hole. From here, each town member recounts where they were and what they were doing when BK’s hole came for them, and the perspective then shifts to a level that depicts that fateful encounter.
As far as plot is concerned, Donut County doesn’t swing for the fences – this is a fairly standard Saturday morning cartoon-ish narrative – but a big part of the charm can be found in the humorous nature of the writing. As a raccoon with a natural penchant for thieving, BK simply can’t understand how it’s his fault that the entire town is now in a sinkhole, and there’s a very quirky sense of humor displayed as everyone airs their complaints. In addition to this, a “Trashopedia” logs entries for all the items taken by the hole, and the items’ descriptions are clearly written by an inquisitive raccoon; tires being referred to as “gloves for your car” is a highlight.
Gameplay is exceptionally relaxing and simple, calling to mind the puzzle-solving mechanics of a point-and-click adventure game. Each level begins with you controlling a small hole, which you simply move beneath items that can comfortably fall in such as rocks, dogs, books, and donuts. With each item that falls in, the hole slightly widens, allowing you to take progressively larger things. A level is typically comprised of about four screens of things to collect; once you’ve cleansed a screen of everything, the camera usually zooms out as it shifts to a new scene to account for the larger hole you’ve made.
Though this is a remarkably easy game to play, a mild challenge is introduced in the form of environmental puzzles that necessitate a bit of deeper thinking. For example, one level sees you taking the hole around a fireworks shop, and you need to figure out how to cause something in the environment to light a nearby rocket so you can knock some birds off of a power line. Given that there’s only one screen to search at a time and that each screen isn’t too complex in its layout, it rarely takes more than a minute or two to figure out what needs to be done to progress to the next screen. Even so, these light puzzles introduce some much-needed variety on the core gameplay; it can get a bit dull just moving the hole around and taking things, but new puzzle concepts are introduced with each level to keep things fresh.
This is all well and good, but perhaps the most disappointing aspect of Donut County is its incredibly short length; we cleared the entire game in about an hour and a half and there isn’t a whole (heh) lot more to see after you’ve seen the credits. Make no mistake, Donut County is an enjoyable and charming experience while it lasts, but just when things feel like they’re starting to pick up, the game ends and you’re left wanting more. Furthermore, the absence of any hidden collectibles, score system, or any other form of incentive to get you to come back means that there’s next to no replay value; you can play levels over again if you feel like it, but there’s no reason to do so other than for the raw sake of it.
It’s hard to see how a game such as Donut County could realistically introduce more content to keep players engaged, but there’s still a sense of disappointment once you get to the end credits, especially considering the price. Donut County is certainly a unique and charming game, but there’s only about as much content here as you’d find in a typical flash or smartphone game, which can usually be played for free. Given that you’re paying over ten bucks for Donut County, it’s difficult to recommend this over other games on the eShop that are certain to give you vastly more entertainment value for the same or a slightly higher price.
If you can stomach the paltry content, Donut County certainly is an enrapturing game that owns the goofy aesthetic of its premise. Environments are full of color and diverse decorations, featuring a low-poly art style that highlights the sharp geometry of objects in a way that pleasingly calls back to the N64 days. This cool visual style is then accompanied by a similarly quirky soundtrack with a mildly ’80s-style vibe that feels perfect for the oddness of the experience. Donut County is very much a game that seems to champion the idea of video games being a form of interactive art and the immaculate design of each level’s visuals and sound reflect that well.
Conclusion
Donut County will no doubt prove to be a divisive experience, but those that are looking for a relaxing and often funny puzzle game will find an enjoyable experience that has just enough charm to justify its existence. With that being said, this is hardly a game that feels like it justifies the relatively high price tag; three hours max of content is a tough pill to swallow regardless of how enamored you are with the concept at its core. We’d recommend you wait for a sale or put some gold points towards this one; it’s a cool experience that you’ll definitely want to check out, but know that you’re not missing much if you choose to skip it.
