Merge Games Game Reviews
Mini Review Crimson Keep (Switch) - A Fun Dungeon Crawler With A Few Gremlins
Keep going
This game was originally covered as part of our Nindie Round Up series that sought to give coverage to a wider breadth of Switch eShop games beyond our standard reviews. In an effort to make our impressions easier to find, we're presenting the original text below in our mini-review format. Crimson Keep is a dungeon crawler with an...
Review Bramble: The Mountain King (Switch) - Solid Puzzle Platforming In A Horrid Nordic Mythscape
Step aside, Hansel and Gretel
A young boy named Olle treks through dark woods after his missing sister. At first, nothing seems awry, yet he soon comes upon pinecones arranged in strange formations. Not long after, a massive shadow flits overhead. In the distance, obscured by the moonlight slanting through the trees, a massive, insidious shape...
Review Time On Frog Island (Switch) - Charming Zelda-Style Trading With Animal Crossing Island Vibes
A 'tad' simple
Time on Frog Island is like a playable fever dream in the best of ways. It places you in the role of the captain of a little sailboat who finds himself marooned on a strange island populated by a frog society. His only hope of getting off the island is by successfully mingling with the frogs and getting them to help him with the...
Review Monster Harvest (Switch) - Poor Execution Of A Promising 'Stardew Valley X Pokémon' Premise
It hurt itself in its confusion!
It must be tough to be a hopeful dev working on a farm sim project. Stardew Valley—a simple looking project made by one guy—has so effectively raised the bar for what a pure farm sim can be that matching it seems almost impossible by this point. The only way that a new game could feasibly beat it would be by...
Review Alex Kidd In Miracle World DX (Switch) - Vintage Sega Hero In Mediocre Remake
Putting the sham in Roshambo
We know we're risking the ire of several hundred very cross Sega Master System fans by saying this, but we have to be blunt — the original Alex Kidd in Miracle World, while inarguably an important and formative classic, is and always has been an exceptionally flawed game. Don't get us wrong, there's plenty to like and...
Review Cloudpunk (Switch) - An Evocative Noir Adventure Ruined By A Messy Switch Port
Blade Scunner
Nivalis, the futuristic metropolis in which the events of Cloudpunk take place, really is the heart and soul of Ion Lands' captivating "neon noir" adventure game. A wonderfully evocative voxel art city, it immediately transports us to a future that so precisely recalls the neon-drenched storefronts, rain-soaked streets and seedy...
Review Bounty Battle (Switch) - A Reprehensible Indie-Infused Take On Super Smash Bros.
Indie Bin
Dark Screen Games' Bounty Battle is such a great idea. "The ultimate indie fighting game." Super Smash Bros. with a roster of pugilists from the cream of the underground scene over the past few years. The protagonists here hail from classics such as Dead Cells, Blasphemous, Axiom Verge,
Mini Review Spirit Of The North (Switch) - Minimalistic Mystery Mired By Myriad Mistakes
The fox and the... other fox
Since the release of the hugely popular Journey, many other games have gone down the route of minimal storytelling, focusing primarily on visuals and music to evoke emotions within the player. Spirit of the North leans heavily into this, tasking you with a very simple objective; explore the environment and solve puzzles...
Review Sparklite (Switch) - An Enjoyable Roguelite That Pays Homage To Zelda In The Best Way
Spark lite, spark bright, you must play Sparklite
Sparklite is a charming action-adventure game that channels the Zelda franchise whilst satisfyingly differentiating itself and establishing its own quirks and nuances. Players will find something both familiar and new here, but what everyone will definitely agree on is that this is an instant...
Dead men crop no farms
There are few things in life as relaxing as a farming simulator. From the likes of Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley and, well, Farming Simulator, it’s a genre that has crept into the mainstream as mellow experiences that can be tackled at your own pace. The joy of them, of course, is that feeling of accomplishment when you...
Review Valfaris (Switch) - Heavy Metal Mayhem That's Rough Around The Edges
Headbangers brawl
The concept of subtlety doesn’t exist in the world of Valfaris, a grimdark sci-fi realm where a grizzled warrior crashes his ship onto an alien world, shooting, slashing and headbanging everything that dares move in the name of vengeance and violence. You’ll shotgun bugs into red mist, collect guns obsessively named around the...
Review Mainlining (Switch) - A Rare Example Of A Game That Doesn't Belong On Switch
Crime and self-punishment
Mainlining places players in a world where the Government has introduced the BLU Pill Act and reactivated the secret service network known as MI7, giving them full and unadulterated access to the personal online information and lives of the population within their jurisdiction on the internet. You play as a member of MI7...
Review RIOT - Civil Unrest (Switch) - A Fantastic Idea Undone By Some Sloppy Execution
I predict a riot
Ah, the strategy game. Once a stalwart of the PC gaming scene, the genre has bloomed on console in recent years as developers re-approach the genre in new and exciting ways. And it's those titles that break away from the traditional military concept that's gripped its mechanics for so long, taking the principles of an RTS and...
Review Aragami: Shadow Edition (Switch) - What We Do In The Shadows
Sadly not about a ninja folding up paper
Stealth is a difficult thing to get right in gaming, and it’s something developers have been trying to nail for decades. Do you go down the GoldenEye route and encourage the player to sneak around while still giving them the option to go all guns blazing should they so desire? Or do you go for a strictly...
Review HoPiKo (Switch) - Brutal Platforming Fun That Provides A Stern But Fair Challenge
HoPpiNg mad
Speedrunning has become the established way to wring a hardcore challenge out of even the most fluffy, easy-going of platformers. Getting through a level as quickly as possible will stretch your skills to the max in much the same way as a time trial run in Mario Kart. Developer Laser Dog understands this. In fact, the entire game of...
Review Candle: The Power Of The Flame (Switch eShop)
Burning from both ends
Unless you’ve been living in complete darkness, nestled under a rock that’s void of access to your trusty Switch console (and a Wi-Fi connection), you will have noticed the eShop is gathering quite the collection of eerie and melancholic platforming titles as of late. The likes of Limbo, Inside and Little Nightmares all do...
Review Cast Of The Seven Godsends (Switch eShop)
Hellspawned
Raven Travel Studios clearly has a lot of love for classic 16-bit platform games, but can its old school platform homage to Super Ghouls’n’Ghosts possibly live up to the source material or even stand up to the best among the current Switch library? Gods be with us. The Kingdom of Dareca is about to fall to Emperor Zaraaima. Prince...
Review The Long Reach (Switch eShop)
Something strange in the neighbourhood
Most horror games on Nintendo Switch (and gaming in general) tend to be of the schlocky supernatural jump-scare variety. There's nothing wrong with that, as Resident Evil Revelations Collection and Outlast: Bundle Of Terror will attest to, but there's ample space for a more subtle, psychological brand of...
Review The Count Lucanor (Switch eShop)
Not for the faint-hearted
You know those nightmares where everything feels innocently real apart from that odd, horrendously creepy, strangely out of place, potentially rabid, demon-like goat in the corner of the room? Well, developer Baroque Decay has kindly wrapped up these fears into a small, puzzle-adventure video game package for us all to...
Review Unbox: Newbie's Adventure (Switch)
Does it deliver the goods?
Unbox: Newbie’s Adventure is ‘packed’ full of features reminiscent of classic '90s 3D platformers such as Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. Developed by Manchester-based indie studio Prospect Games, the game has been described as a “love letter” to those legendary titles and, thanks to more modern technology, is...
