Ebenezer and the Invisible World Review (Switch eShop)

Of the hundreds of versions of A Christmas Carol that we’re all bombarded with in the lead-up to the Holidays, very few give any thought to what comes after Scrooge is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. The focus is firmly on how he becomes a changed man and not what he actually does with his newfound joy and Christmas spirit. Ebenezer and the Invisible World makes the bold proposition that Scrooge would become a ghost-thrashing, high-jumping champion of the common people and we're here for it.

Set several years after the events of Dickens’ novel, Ebenezer and The Invisible World sees the miser-turned-saint as something of a bridge between the spirit and the material worlds. His encounter with the Ghosts of Christmas left him able to see the souls of those who could not cast off their chains of misery and cruelty as he has, leaving him the only one capable of aiding them on their quest for peace. It is a fun play on the original story we know so well and it immediately drew us in.

The plot unfolds on Christmas Eve, as should be expected considering the source material. Caspar Malthus, the head of a long line of wealthy industrialists with a deep-seated hatred for the poor and working class, was previously visited by the same Ghosts who changed Scrooge for the better. Instead of discovering the joys of Christmas and humanity, Malthus was instead offered a glimpse of a device he would one day develop that would allow him to rid London of the undesirable commoners. It is up to Scrooge to stop him, with a little help from his ghost pals.

Ebenezer and The Invisible World is as close to the Metroidvania formula as you can get without putting your character in a power suit on Planet Zebes and giving them a whip. Scrooge jumps around the city on platforms, swinging his cane to damage both ghosts and the foot soldiers of the Malthus family who have been sent to squash unrest in the streets. Along the way, he befriends ghosts who will give him new abilities. Some of these allow him to traverse to new areas of London and advance the plot while others give him new attack powers to protect himself.

There is nothing here you won’t have seen before, but we didn’t mind as much as we thought we would. Despite feeling very formulaic, Ebenezer and The Invisible World manages to be a lot of fun when you aren’t hindered by serious, game-breaking bugs. The art is crisp and vibrant, with well-designed characters and levels that make you feel like you’re playing in Dickensian London. There are plenty of references to A Christmas Carol sprinkled throughout, just to make sure you don't forget what you're playing. The idea of Scrooge violently wielding his new-found virtue by beating the ectoplasm out of ghosts across London and defending the working class is delightfully absurd.

For the most part, the gameplay is solid – combat feels challenging but still fair. The platforming controls are tight enough that you know which jumps you should be able to make and which ones you need a new ability for. There are some control quirks, such as Scrooge’s backward dash which we kept forgetting about and used to inadvertently hurl the old man into the jaws of death several times. We would have liked more save points throughout the levels, as we lost large chunks of progress to dying or all-too-frequent game crashes.

The fact that the game crashed several times in our 15 hours with it is only one of the serious flaws in the way it runs, at least on Switch. During our playthrough, we were unable to expand Scrooge’s heath bar beyond its default due to the game freezing when we approached the character responsible for that feature. This issue persisted in both docked and handheld modes, effectively barring our ability to upgrade our character and progress through the story. It felt like being locked into a higher difficulty mode against our will.

There are other, smaller problems with the build quality and polish of Ebenezer and The Invisible World. The same button used to exit menus also equips items, which meant we had to exit out of the equipment menu every time we wanted to change anything with our loadout. One NPC’s dialogue changed to a blank box after we completed part of their quest. Our equipment menu also got bugged at one point and showed us having two of the same heirlooms equipped. These bugs weren’t as catastrophic to our playthrough as the crashes or the inability to upgrade our health, but they made the game feel messier than it needed to. We understand that the developer intends to release a Day One patch to address at least some of these problems, but we can only review the game we have and this one, at times, was nearly unplayable.

We ended our time with this game feeling frustrated and, ultimately, let down by the experience. Despite some odd choices with the way Scrooge moves, the combat is fun and offers the kind of challenge fans of the Metroidvania genre have come to expect. The core concept of the setting and story are both great, as is the art style. This game has all the makings of greatness, but it is so severely let down by the technical flaws that we can’t recommend it. A patch might fix these problems and make this into a solid entry in the genre, but, for now, we say “Bah, humbug!” to Ebenezer and The Invisible World.