katjaS

You can (and should) finish this in one evening, best played together with a loved one. Fun variety of puzzles, with few of them suffering from tricky controls (you can restart the scone making until you get an easy recipe). Overall a cozy co-op game with a bit of humor, pleasant experience. I wish there were more games like this.

A very zen artistic Tetris variant with nice visuals and audio. Though - at a steep 40$ price tag - adventure mode can be finished in just an hour. When played in handheld mode without internet connection, it repeatedly tries to connect to the internet. Developers seemingly did not understand handheld / portable idea - for a Tetris game… Mild but bearable performance issues. The music is very mainstream club music that can get a bit annoying if you are not really into that. Can be relaxing but Switch has better games for this purpose. I don’t think the artistic visuals and music alone make this the „best Tetris game“ - maybe if you know nothing but mushy PlayStation gameplay. Even Tetris 99 (which comes at a much lower price) gameplay feels way snappier and way more precise.

I'm into immersive games and was drawn to The Red Lantern despite the mediocre to bad reviews. I often encountered experimental games that didn't get perfect scores from our dopamine- and realistic graphics-addicted reviewer crowd, but that left such a deep impression on me that I still think about them or replay them sometimes (like Wanderlust: Travel Stories, Firewatch, State of Mind, or The Way). So I took the same risk with The Red Lantern, but unfortunately ended up quite disappointed by it. The graphics and sound design is actually really good, beautiful and and the game feels immersive, as the trailers show. Though I guess the devs fell in love with the fact that they had some nice graphical design, and didn't feel the need to add an actually good or fun game to those beautiful graphics. What the trailer won't show you is that the game is completely on rails. You only have the choice between left and right at forks in the road. There is a set of random events that get repetitive soon. Random is fine because it is a roguelike (another lazy game design decision, but hey, it can turn out good given some effort, and the idea to integrate it more with storytelling seems nice), but their encounter rates seem to be badly aligned with ensuring that the game is actually fun and playable. Some of those events are apparently supposed to touch you, like looking into the eyes of a sweet elk when you are about to shoot it. This doesn't work out at all though since, as soon as you realize that your whiny protagonist brought virtually no food, you can't help but take any chance to kill any beautiful animal you encounter (as long as those 3 bullets last). Given the bad encounter rates the game becomes so hard that apparently they added a function that will 'reward you for failure', e.g. your protagonist will pack more food if you starved. For me this just made the experience even more frustrating. That praised voice acting is nice in the beginning, but the stereotypical 'insecure US-American woman that wants to get back to her prozac' tone and writing gets on your nerves quite soon after you have heard the same line for the x-th time. I ended up turning off the voiceover, which interestingly made the experience better. Also the music loop is ridiculously short and gets old fast. The game is obviously barely tested, after the first patch I still encountered a lot of obvious bugs like the volume sliders being set to 0 with every new run. The devs now asked their customers on Twitter to submit bugs to them, virtually asking them to betatest their game. One more point deducted for this. I'm obviously quite disappointed, but will change this review in case some future update manages to make this an actually good gaming experience. Right now it feels like some alpha version thrown into the market far too early. It has the potential and requirements to be really enjoyable, but is far away from it right now.. If you still consider buying this, definitely check out some longplay videos first to see whether this is for you.

Played this docked with headphones on a big screen, with compass and map only (i.e. no map location) and enjoyed every minute. What a beautiful, immersive, relaxing experience. I've spent another hour in the free hiking bonus game (with continuous time, i.e. the sun rises and sets) directly after finishing because I didn't want to leave the forest. Kind of matches the idea of the story, which seems to explore human escapism. Compass orientation without map location should be the default as it adds to the immersion during the first few hours when you don't know the area well yet. Learning to use natural landmarks to determine where you are fits the setting well. Storytelling, dialogue, voice acting, variety and details in the surrounding nature are excellent. I would have wished to see a few more animals or animal traces at least, there are almost none (you can hear a few birds and insects). I will replay this game as the dialogue can take different directions depending on your choices and speed. You can even choose to not talk to Delilah at all. Firewatch also comes with audio commentary. I've found that the ending fits the idea of the story very well, but you may need certain life experiences to understand why Henry (and you?) wished it would have been different. People claiming that you can finish Firewatch in under 4 hours must have been rushing (running) from checkpoint to checkpoint, and must have missed a lot of exploration, looking closely at items (there are a few hidden story hints, e.g. in scribbles), side-tracking or just taking a look at the beautiful scenery and taking photos. I needed two long evenings (7h) and still felt that I've rushed through a few sections. Take your time and let the atmosphere sink in, it is worth it. All console versions of this game seem to have performance issues, but imho on my Switch play through they were minor. There were brief stutters from time to time, and about 5 times during the entire game it got stuck for a 1-3 seconds to reload. None of these issues harmed my flow or experience of the game. All the rest of the game was smooth. Check out Switch gameplay videos if you want to see for yourself (but be very careful not to pick up spoilers). The performance issues were more noticeable during the free hiking bonus game, hopefully this will get patched. This would be an amazing VR game too.

This is a highly creative narrative experience. It will surprise and shock you, and it has some replay value for me as the stories are varied and interesting. I highly recommend it for players interested in interactive storytelling, it is full of surprising ideas and creativity. Also runs well and looks very good on Switch. The downside is that - while you will relate the stories to your own life - they are ultimately forgettable and have a B movie “shocker” feeling to them. It fortunately also manages to stay away from being pretentious (like Life is Strange) and taking itself too seriously, but I usually expect these interactive experiences to try saying something deeper, like Firewatch about escapism or Eliza about various modern dystopian developments. The game is great but feels a bit shallow. Compared to e.g. Firewatch it doesn’t reach a high level of immersion as everything is episodic, and episodes are short and seem to serve rather short attention spans (i.e. very fun but somehow reducing immersion), even if you look at everything in the rooms. At a price of 20 bucks it is also very short, it took me a bit over 3 hours and I explored everything without rushing. I recommend to buy it, but to wait for a sale.

If you like the thrill of ghost rides this may be your thing. The game is masterful in building up strong suspense and then suddenly scaring you into pieces, especially if you wear headphones. It stays within the realm of psychological horror and won't bore you with cheap elements like zombies. The surrealist horror scenes are cool and I took a lot of screenshots. However, all the gameplay revolves around intense jump scares and searching for (sometimes too well hidden) story pieces in-between in drawers, bookshelves etc., and opening doors to follow the predetermined path. Many people out there do like jump scares, especially when they are done so well - this game is without doubt a great ghost ride. But for my personal taste they are simply a cheap horror element, and be warned if you feel the same and expect more mystery and depth from a horror game. The underlying story is there, it's horrific, and a lot of things go on in your own mind while you slowly uncover it. But it also leaves a lot barely explained. If you expected more story depth due to screenshots of surrealist scenes and how they use famous paintings, and the promise of showing the mind of a mentally ill painter, then you may, like me, end up a bit disappointed. The scares have connections to the story, but in itself rarely contribute to it, they rather illustrate it.. It's usually just surface. Due to this I had to force myself through the second half as I expected more than a linear ghost ride with mostly meaningless visuals. Another thing I found a bit annoying was the strong asset reuse. Also, Layers of Fear does not seem to be optimized for the Switch. It is my only Switch game right now where the fan can be noticed, virtually running all the time, and it cooks the little thing quite a bit so that I took some worried breaks in-between.

This is a nice addition to your Switch library if you, like many, find Fritz Kahns mechanical body part designs appealing. Note that it can be finished in less than an hour, but the eShop price is quite fair for that. The puzzles are very simple and are just there to enhance the experience. I've played it in TV mode (wanted to see the designs in full) and have to deduct one point because the shaky mouse pointer controls often feel in your way (had to switch to tablet mode briefly because one ear puzzle was too difficult with them), and because it does not seem to be well-optimized (Switch becomes hot).

This is a twelve years-old point & click adventure that has been ported to various systems. It is kind of a mixed bag and to like it you need to tolerate its shortcomings, but you should consider it (especially at the recent discounts) if you enjoyed games like Gabriel Knight 1 or the first Broken Sword adventures. The story and setup around the Tunguska event are good and interesting, most of the writing is nice so I've been motivated to continue throughout the ~10 game hours. (Played it in German, so can't say anything about the English translation.) The static scenes are often pretty, just the 3D character models look mediocre today, they should have gone for hand-drawn characters as they would have withstood the test of time. There are a few illogical puzzles, which is typical for the genre; but the game is careful about not overloading the player with options, and usually when you got through the illogical bit the rest of the puzzle is straight-forward. Certain stereotypes and tropes are overused, characters are rather flat (e.g. Nina getting away with everything due to her looks, this seems to be her primary characteristic). Menus look and feel amateurish at times (e.g. save menu will ask whether you want to overwrite but not whether you really want to load). The game's hint systems make life very easy for the player: The journal menu has the story so-far and a walkthrough, L marks all objects you can interact with, and the game will show you whether you can combine objects, so you won't have to endure numerous "this makes no sense" statements. This avoidance of genre-typical annoyances can make the experience smooth which is good if you just want to follow the story. The touch controls in handheld mode are fine, controls get clumsy when you use the buttons and motion control in docked mode. The mouse pointer control has a sluggish feeling, and the save menu is on the B button for some reason, which most players associate with "cancel". Flipping journal pages is on X and Y.. The game sometimes does not register clicks. Some loading times are surprisingly long given the age of the game, and there is a nasty bug that makes creating a new save state take minutes (no, the game has not crashed, just keep on waiting..). Overwriting existing ones is fine but still takes seconds.

If you like Blade Runner, Black Mirror, The Matrix or film noir stories, have interest in transhumanism and AI, like to think along and know what to expect (a compelling story, atmosphere and exploration) and not to expect (action and difficult puzzles) from an interactive story game, then consider getting this title. The most important part of an interactive story is, well, the story and the way it is presented; and for me that ride has been compelling from the first to the last minute. There are many scenes and situations that are really well dramatised, some so well that they gave me goosebumps. The author, Ganteföhr has been targeting adult players with his adventure game stories for two decades and he did a great job here. There are various references, details and thought-provoking situations that people with an interest in AI, privacy, transhumanism will understand and like. You can stop to think deeper about the constellations (e.g. the meaning of the two main characters) and interpret around, like in Black Mirror and Blade Runner or any good literature. The low poly graphical style is truly aesthetic, the play with light is used beautifully for working out the contrast between the two cities (and characters). Also, somebody at daedalic seems to have a hidden talent for interior architecture. That characters look like they are made from glass shards is another embedded meaningful detail. It is not perfect however. The controls are a bit clunky and you often get stuck in the beautiful furnishings. But this is not a big nuisance. What weighs more is that, like too many otherwise good adventure games (Monkey Island 2, Thimbleweed Park) State of Mind has a weak ending that leaves too many interesting story branches open. The last 15% of the game feel rushed and it feels like they took the easy way out. Nevertheless State of Mind entertained me for a solid 12 hours, and I will play it again with the English voiceover (which has the English voiceactor of Geralt). Btw, I did not buy it from the eShop but got the physical module / retail version from Germany.

Immersive game with some of the very best pixel art out there. The story is reminiscent of classical science fiction and it has quite some (unobtrusive) world building to add to that. I like atmospheric games that do put effort into storytelling (e.g. point&click adventures), so The Way was interesting for me in the first place. Gameplay consists mostly of puzzles and some action sections, and there is barely any repetitiveness in those; the whole game is varied and creative. I have played Another World, Flashback, Heart of Darkness, Oddworld, Blackthorne; but always lost interest after a few hours when these games became too repetitive. The Way is the first puzzle platformer that I have actually finished. Difficulty and fairness issues, or most unclear puzzles of previous versions of this game seem to be fixed or improved in this remastered version. You may need to consult a walkthrough a few times nevertheless, but otherwise it is possible to get through well (do expect some nerve-racking sections though.. but checkpoints are frequent). The game breaking bug upon Switch release is fixed. The ending was mildly, but not completely disappointing (you are still rewarded with beautiful new scenes) as it is rather foreseeable and doesn't respect the mystery that has been build up carefully before. Also it only mildly compensates for the sudden action sections you have to get through at the end, which will get unnerving due to the jumping controls that's accuracy do not exactly suit action.. Anyway, got through all these troubles and finished at 7 hours.