Reventure (Switch eShop)
2019's Reventure captured the imaginations of both Anespa41 and goldgriffin:
It's a silly 2D side-scrolling adventure game where you have to save your princess. Yet, finding the princess is not the ultimate goal, but finding as many hilarious endings as possible. It doesn't go for deep mechanics, but comedy as a parody of the likes of The Legend of Zelda.
A game that lets you explore outcomes all wrapped up in a retro platform game. The play area is quite small but learning how to progress is never straightforward. Every death is an ending to itself. Including a short cut scene of your fate. Then you start over as a descendant. So the player must learn from their mistakes, completely explore every inch of the map and experiment with every tool to find the true ending. Also the game keeps track of every ending for the completionist who wishes to find them all. Simple gameplay with a lot depth.
Rubato (Switch eShop)
Retro-fuelled Rubato floats somnambulance's boat:
Not only does it look and sound like a forgotten classic 2D platformer from the PS1/Sega Saturn, but it directly dips into the era that those games came from by interspersing the game with bizarre 3D dancing clipart and '90s internet culture references. Yes, the original memes. The game is a chaotic, but approachable physics platformer with a great sense of humor and greater sense of gameplay. It’s an utterly confident and strange game that needs to be played to be believed. If you’re someone that feels hungry for creativity in modern gaming, here’s your long-awaited buffet.
Space Adventure Cobra - The Awakening (Switch eShop)
shonenjump86 keeps things short if not sweet with a shoutout for Space Adventure Cobra - The Awakening:
Another classic manga/anime series that has a review on Push Square.
Indeed it does - check out PS' review here:
- Related Games
- A Dark Room (Switch eShop)
- Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers (Switch eShop)
- Battle Suit Aces (Switch eShop)
- Big Hops (Switch eShop)
- Brotato (Switch eShop)
- Brotato - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition (Switch 2)
- City Hunter (Switch eShop)
- City Hunter (Switch 2)
- Deadzone: Rogue (Switch 2)
- Death Howl (Switch)
- Depth of Extinction (Switch eShop)
- Easy Red 2 (Switch eShop)
- Filmechanism (Switch eShop)
- Go! Go! Mister Chickums (Switch eShop)
- Heian City Story (Switch eShop)
- Iris and the Giant (Switch eShop)
- Leap Year (Switch eShop)
- Lia: Hacking Destiny (Switch eShop)
- Lovish (Switch eShop)
- LunarLux (Switch eShop)
- Mixolumia (Switch eShop)
- Öoo (Switch eShop)
- Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster (Switch eShop)
- Phantom Spark (Switch eShop)
- Reventure (Switch eShop)
- Rubato (Switch eShop)
- Space Adventure Cobra - The Awakening (Switch eShop)
- Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator (Switch eShop)
- Splatterbot (Switch eShop)
- Super Magbot (Switch eShop)
- TR-49 (Switch eShop)
- Vertical Strike Endless Challenge (Switch eShop)
- Windswept (Switch eShop)
- See Also











































Comments 47
The main takeaway from all of this is that it's okay to be called Shat.
Secondly, I would also like to recommend Ooo. Short and sweet, cute and fun.
A Dark Room was never reviewed or in one of these!? 😱 The game’s fantastic and can be found on sale for as little as $0.99 at times. Sorry Toree, but this is the best game I’ve ever bought for a dollar.
Thanks for posting my shout for Rubato and I’ll also second that Öoo is one of the best indies to release recently, was one of my favorite games of 2025 and I’m so glad it’s on Switch where it belongs. I liked Lovish too earlier this year.
Filmechanism and Windswept are going on the wishlist.
I like this kind of articles! Can't wait to try lots of indie gems I had never heard about!
The Space Adventure Cobra anime was one of the inspirations for Metroid (NES) I really liked the demo and planning to definitely buy it on sale
Glad Battle Suit Aces got a couple of mentions, I was going to mention that one too. Wonderful game.
I also enjoyed Iris and the Giant a lot and gave TR-49 on my to-play list, and Death Howl on the wishlist.
Easily the best segment on NintendoLife. I find more to play here then anywhere else.
Windswept is an excellent game, highly recommended for any DKC fan. I was a bit disappointed with City Hunter, however: it's very expensive and the extra content isn't very interesting. Even for a PC Engine game, it's mediocre, with few similar levels and few enemies. In my opinion, it lacks the anime style. Ok they put Get Wild but it's not worth the €25.
Nintendo Insider gave Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster and Deadzone: Rogue both a 9 out of 10.
Crazy that NL missed Deadzone Rogue
I've had Lunar Lux on my radar for a while, it's also on sale right now in the eshop so I'm thinking of giving it a shot.
Good reminder to pick up Ooo, Deadzone Rogue, and Battle Suit Aces!
I love these articles; I wish they were more often. There are a lot of games I haven't heard of this time so I'll have to check some out.
Hopefully someday I'll be getting into the nitty gritty of eShop gems. For now, there's such a supply of widely acclaimed games that I mostly just stick with those.
I do have a few of these games on my wishlist, though.
Battle Suit Aces sounds like my kind of game! Never heard of it before, even though I liked Battle Chef Brigade.
Looks like some bangers in there - probably give Battle Suit ACES a crack.
Not surprising there’s so many titles that fly under the radar - with all the grit (or at least something that rhymes with it) on the old eShop scope, I’m surprised we haven’t crashed on a snow planet and had to burn camphor-wood soldiers to stay warm.
Still - nice to see they’ve sorted out all that hentAI slop though, eh? 🙄
I love indies!
Multiple of these games intrigue me. Working through the recommendations. So far: big hops and death howl. That said, there’s only so much time…
Also: isnt filmechanism actually a sort of Braid?
Lots that looks great here. And that Leap Year write-up definitely had me sold!
Dude, Vertical Strike endless challenge is an asset flip. Do NOT recommend people to buy asset flips.
Hunt down is amazing! Any pixel art fans of Megadrive or SNES run and gun games should try this delicious title out.
Can confirm Deadzone is hell of a lot of fun.
Lia: Hacking Destiny sounds right up my alley. Just picked it up.
Nice list of games, several I've heard great things of also before while others are new to me (will consider adding at least some of the latter to my Deku Deals wishlist when I can) - thank you all for the recommendations!
How can I even go to page two when the likes of Big Hops, Death Howl, and Filmechanism already seems like enough to keep me entertained for days? Literally never heard of any of these.
Started Rubato earlier today, and I second the recommendation.
Thanks for these articles, I always love reading lists of great games I haven't heard of, but it does make me wish there was enough time in the day to play them all!
Always a treat to read these articles.
I have four of them this time around. Brotato is a solid alternative to Vampire Survivors. Despite its unoriginal sci-fi setting, Deadzone offers a ton of variety and is a blast to play. I didn’t click with Iris and the Giant as much; it’s not bad, but neither the story nor the mechanics hooked me. Reventure has some good humor but can get tedious, especially if you’re going for all endings.
From this list, I’m most interested in Leap Year, Mixolumia, and Öoo.
Just wanted to comment this is my favourite series on Nintendo Life, I wish there were more articles about overlooked games.
I'll also recommend people check out Deku Deals if you don't already. A bunch of the games in the article regularly go on sale.
The lack of a review for Hogwarts Legacy for Switch and its subsequent Switch 2 Edition upgrade is truly baffling. The game is a really, really top tier AAA experience, imo, which makes the absence of a review for either quite conspicuous.
Ooo was my favorite game I played in 2025. It's brilliant.
I'll also echo that this series is great, do it more often!!!
This is why I love the Nintendo life community!
I am a 2 bit old guy raised on 8 bit gaming.
A lot of my gaming choices are influenced by the community posts.
MarioParty On, Nintendolifers!!
Best WW2 shooter ever, eh?
Great list! I instantly pulled the trigger on Filmechanism (currently on sale at its lowest price).
I was a big fan of ElecHead, and didn’t know Öoo even existed, so I will be checking that out.
Lovish and Mixolumia also look very neat.
Some great hidden gems some of which I've never heard of before. Will be checking out Ooo. Love these articles.
@Andy_Witmyer Harry Potter is CANCELLED.
I cannot recommend heian city story enough guys, it's really fun 😃
I really enjoyed Big Hops, but It never quite hit greatness for me. The platforming was fun and the characters and writing were enjoyable but it was buggy (I think a lot got patched) and the physics was a bit hit and miss for me. Grappling was either super fun and smooth or an absolute nightmare depending on the situation and sometimes where to go wasn’t actually very clear at all. This was sadly at it’s worst for me in the penultimate minecarts section. The story kind of just ended with little fanfare too which was a shame.
Then there was a bunch of systems that were just felt a little bit tacked on which was a shame. The clothing system was really disappointing. Hats just fall off when you take a hit or sometimes just randomly mid-jump and if you don’t go and get them, if you even can, they’re gone and you have to buy them again. Except the store is so infrequent that you buy a hat, play for 5 mins, loose the hat and then it’s a good hour or two before you find the store again. You can also grow fruit which is entirely pointless and skippable and you collect bugs but there’s not really anything for doing it. And both those things happen in the same shop.
The backpack charms system was very cool though and things like the lockkicking game were very silly fun. Overall I enjoyed it a lot, and I think now that the bugs are largely addressed I’d enjoy it a lot more. It it felt like it needed a bit longer in the oven. Certainly if Big Hops 2 happens I will be there day one because the bones were super solid.
Deadzone: Rogue is amazing.
@PtM Sadly, that's basically what I assumed. I'd love for that to not be the case, but I can't really think of any other reasonable explanation for why NL would have ignored it - specially considering the game – and by extension, the franchise's – immense clout, sales, and cultural reach. Disappointing, if true. Especially when the Switch 2 version represented a substantial improvement over the (borderline miraculous) Switch port, imho.
@Andy_Witmyer You’d love for NL to not care about their queer audience?
I own a fair few of these, but these 3 I specifically added to my wishlist because of this article:
I also discovered that Brotato has a DLC I didn't know about!
Removed - inappropriate
Imagine @dartmonkey and crew combining some of these trailers into their own IndieWorld-style showcase.
I'm definitely going to check out Easy Red 2, Filmechanism, and TR-49. I already have Super Magbot and Ooo. This is probably my favorite NL article type.
Yep, Filmechenism is a real gem. I highly recommend to all the puzzle fans.
@dartmonkey thank you for fixing my typo 😭
Speaking of games that haven't been reviewed by NL, has anyone played Mouse: PI yet?
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