I realize I’ve played several smaller/indie games on the Switch that I haven’t reviewed here, so here goes:
- Dave the Diver: One of my admins turned me on to this game (why are all my department’s admins gamers? Is everyone under the age of 30 a gamer?) It’s basically a farming/management sim with some light puzzle-solving and a few surprisingly tough boss fights thrown in. You play Dave, a very (ahem) buoyant diver whose shifty buddy Cobra cajoles him into spearfishing to support the sushi restaurant he’s opening in a tropical cove bordering the “Blue Hole,” a legendary sea sink that plunges to unusual depths, thus allowing Dave to encounter exotic fish species as well as some cool Sea People and their kingdom. The ocean scenes are rendered beautifully despite the old-school 128-bit resolution—quite a feat. And it’s fun (though not entirely relaxing at first with your small oxygen tanks, weak weapons, and plentiful sharks) catching fish and exploring the depths of the Blue Hole. The restaurant management sim confused me a bit at first as I haven’t played management games before, but I think it’s probably pretty straightforward for anyone who has. The characters are fun, the occasional bosses you have to fight challenging, and overall it was a great experience. It’s definitely the kind of game you can keep playing after you’ve finished the main storyline, so I might dip back in at some point (har har) and try to max out the menu!
- Night in the Woods: All the reviews of this game say the cute design belies a deep and sometimes dark story, and I think that’s right. You play May, a cat who’s dropped out of college for mysterious reasons and come back home to her economically depressed New England-ish town, where she reconnects with old friends (and enemies) and gets into mischief. The game has a lot of interesting things to say about the intersection of economic stress, community breakdown, and mental health—and for the most part it does it in an engaging way as you learn basslines for your friends’ terrible band, explore the ins and outs (and rooftops) of the town, try to salvage your relationships, and work on solving the mystery of where an old friend has vanished to. That’s the point at which the story takes a patently ridiculous twist that I won’t spoil because it’s too stupid to bother. But the rest of the game stands up just fine without it.
- What Remains of Edith Finch: A first-person 360 panning puzzler that reminded me a lot of Myst both in the mood and in the game-play. You play the titular character returning home after (yet another) family death to try to figure out why everyone in the family has passed away from one unlucky cause or another. This is how I remembered that first-person games make me seasick. Also, there was a little too much gloom and not enough puzzle for me personally, though the game did have some nice points about the value of a life not equating to its length. If you’re in the mood this fall for a quick and spooky haunted-house mystery with great textual dynamics and a pleasantly old-school vibe, this might be the game for you. (Fair warning that it doesn’t give you a tutorial at the beginning at all—make sure to try *all* the buttons on your Switch, or you will be riding that ferry for a looooooooooooooooong time.)
- Cocoon: DNF—it’s a very pretty puzzle game where you play a little scarab beetle that pushes glowing balls around and pulls things to explore an outer-spacey world and beat progressively harder bosses to get access to more glowy balls and outer-spacey worlds. There’s no story, and I just didn’t care.
The Rookery 