Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for February 5th, 2021. As usual for a Friday, we’ve got a whole bunch of new releases to check out. They’re… they’re not the greatest games today, friends. But we’ve got summaries of all of them anyway. Things are rounded out with the lists of the newest sales along with the outgoing ones. Not much news to cover, but SNK has announced that the NEOGEO Pocket Color game SNK vs. Capcom will be coming to Switch on February 17th, so that’s something. Let’s get into what we’ve got!
New Releases
How to Take Off Your Mask Remastered ($14.99)
This otome visual novel comes from the prolific developer Roseverte and publisher Ratalaika Games. It’s short, it’s cute, and its ending leaves a lot of questions dangling for later games. A girl named Lilia is living her normal routine life, working in a bakery and hanging out with her childhood friend Ronan. One day she wakes up and finds herself in the form of a catgirl. She rushes out of her house only to run right into the city guard… Ronan? Who is Lilia really? Who is Ronan? Can they find their true selves and love along the way? A neat concept but ultimately I’m hard-pressed to recommend it for the price it’s going for. It’s just too thin.
Glittering Sword ($4.99)
You know, it’s never very encouraging when an eShop description starts with a mildly philosophical warning not to judge the game by its screenshots. Well, let’s take a closer look. Basically, it’s a screen-by-screen action-puzzle game. There’s a bit of Sokoban-style pushing puzzles, some action, and a lot of trap avoiding. Things get more complicated as you go along, as you would expect. Honestly, you can probably judge this game fairly well by the screenshots in spite of its insistence otherwise.
Jumping Stack Ball ($3.99)
Pix Arts is doing a little garbo-game cropdusting over the next day or two. Brace yourselves. This one has you bouncing a ball on plates stacked on rotating spirals, smashing each one to descend a little bit more. Avoid smashing the black plates, however. If you do that, your game is over. The idea, I think, is to rotate the plates around such that your ball doesn’t touch the black parts of the structure. Not much to it, and I’m pretty sure it’s cribbing from another game, but we’ve seen worse trash from this developer.
Super Meatball ($0.99)
Amazing meatball! But not really. This is, if absolutely nothing else whatsoever, the cheapest party game released on the Switch today. Up to four players can join in on this one via local multiplayer. The idea is that you are driving a car with a fork attached to it on a table with a big hungry shark sitting on either side. Your goal is to stick a meatball with your fork and drive it into the appropriate shark mouth to earn a point. Whoever gets the most points, wins. It’s a strange concept and it’s so cheap it would be hard not to get your money’s worth out of it on laughs alone, but be warned: it’s not very good at all.
Asterix & Obelix XXL 3 – The Crystal Menhir ($29.99)
The good thing about Asterix & Obelix XXL 3 is that it includes a two-player local co-op mode. It’s a natural fit for the license, and it’s about time it was added to this particular series. Playing through with a friend is almost enough to make this game tolerable. Almost. Unfortunately, this game suffers from being both unambitious and a technical mess. If you’ve played the other XXL games, nothing in here will surprise you except how badly it runs. Which I suppose is no surprise, given the game struggled on the PlayStation 4. Anyway, if you really loved the first two games and have a high tolerance for performance issues, you can proceed with extreme caution. Everyone else should just move along.
FINALSWORD Definitive Edition ($16.99)
This game made headlines several months back for using plagiarized assets from other games including, audaciously enough, The Legend of Zelda and getting yanked off of the eShop as a result. Now stripped of the infringing material, it has returned to the eShop. Setting aside its little controversy, is there anything worth caring about here? Ehn, not really. It’s quite ambitious, I’ll give it that. But it’s clunky to play, the world feels sparse, and it’s just not very entertaining at all. If you want to try it out without paying, you can play a bit of it for free on mobile. You’ll probably get what I’m saying here within a few minutes.
Magical Maze ($2.99)
This one is handheld mode only, as it requires you to use touch controls. You swipe your finger to guide a coin through various mazes. Very simple presentation, but you get a fair quantity of stages to play through here. A whopping 270 stages, in fact. Realistically, that’s probably more than you would ever want. Perhaps you’ll get more of a thrill out of this gameplay concept than I did, however. But hey, it’s only three dollars. I can’t ask for too much out of any game at that price, and I’ve certainly seen worse things at this price point than Magical Maze.
Binarystar Infinity ($4.99)
The game describes itself as a 1-bit shoot-em-up, which I guess refers to that low-color pixelated look recently popularized by the likes of Downwell and Minit. You can play solo or have another player join in via local multiplayer. There are eight different levels, each capped off with a unique boss. There are a couple of unlockable extra modes to play after you’ve managed to make your way through the main game. It seems fine for its price, but not spectacularly so.
Blow Up Monsters ($2.99)
Kind of an Angry Birds-ish affair where you’re given a limited supply of bombs for each stage and need to eliminate all of the monsters, many of whom will be hiding behind some sort of defenses. It’s another Piotr Skalski game, and lives up to that in every way. Not a total rip-off, still quite generic, reasonably well-made, and cheap enough that you may not care about its numerous faults.
Escape 2088 ($4.00)
A low-cost escape room game that feels as cheap as it is. There are three different areas to explore, items to pick up and use, and even an optional time limit if you want to add a little extra pressure. You can use the touchscreen or you can use a regular controller, with the former feeling more comfortable. It’s a very generic sort of thing, but for four dollars it’s a cheap way to scratch the itch if you’re craving a quick-and-dirty room escape game.
Sales
(North American eShop, US Prices)
Truly for a Friday that’s a somewhat small list of new sales. Capcom’s got its Mega Man games discounted again in case you don’t already own them. Dicey Dungeons has its first post-release discount, and that is one game you definitely want to own. Kairosoft has put a few of its popular sims on sale with a modest discount, bringing the price down to just over double the mobile versions. Wow! Not much going on in the weekend outbox, but do take a careful look anyway.
Select New Games on Sale
Wordherd ($1.99 from $5.99 until 2/8)
Chasm ($7.99 from $19.99 until 2/10)
PixARK ($14.79 from $39.99 until 2/10)
Townsmen: A Kingdom Rebuilt ($4.99 from $19.99 until 2/11)
NUTS ($16.99 from $19.99 until 2/11)
Stunt Kite Party ($2.49 from $9.99 until 2/11)
Mega Man Zero/ZX Collection ($19.79 from $29.99 until 2/12)
Mega Man Legacy Collection ($9.99 from $14.99 until 2/12)
Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 ($9.99 from $19.99 until 2/12)
Mega Man X Legacy Collection ($9.99 from $19.99 until 2/12)
Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2 ($9.99 from $19.99 until 2/12)
Mega Man 11 ($14.99 from $29.99 until 2/12)
Dungeon Warfare ($3.39 from $9.99 until 2/14)
Drawn to Life: Two Realms ($6.99 from $9.99 until 2/15)
Moto Racer 4 ($1.99 from $14.99 until 2/17)
Dicey Dungeons ($11.24 from $14.99 until 2/17)
Offroad Racing: BxAxM ($1.99 from $19.99 until 2/17)
Blue Fire ($17.99 from $19.99 until 2/18)
MotoGP 18 ($2.99 from $29.99 until 2/18)
Happy Animals Bowling ($2.49 from $4.99 until 2/18)
Hand of Fate 2 ($13.49 from $29.99 until 2/18)
Half Dead ($2.49 from $4.99 until 2/18)
Quell Zen ($1.99 from $7.99 until 2/18)
Lost Artifacts: Time Machine ($3.99 from $9.99 until 2/18)
Ultra Foodmess ($2.59 from $3.99 until 2/18)
Five Dates ($10.39 from $12.99 until 2/18)
Tiny Troopers Joint Ops XL ($3.24 from $12.99 until 2/19)
Welcome to Hanwell ($2.99 from $14.99 until 2/21)
Yonder: Cloud Catcher Chronicles ($16.49 from $29.99 until 2/23)
Space Ribbon ($1.99 from $4.99 until 2/23)
Crazy Zen Mini Golf ($1.99 from $4.99 until 2/23)
Pinball Lockdown ($1.99 from $5.99 until 2/23)
Hellpoint ($31.49 from $34.99 until 2/24)
Clay Skeet Shooting ($2.99 from $3.99 until 2/24)
My Universe: My Baby ($14.99 from $29.99 until 2/24)
Drums ($1.99 from $9.99 until 2/24)
Max Reloaded II ($2.97 from $9.90 until 2/24)
Negative: The Way of Shinobi ($4.24 from $4.99 until 2/24)
Sudoku Relax 5 Full Bloom ($1.99 from $4.99 until 2/24)
Golf ($1.99 from $9.99 until 2/24)
Hunt ($1.99 from $9.99 until 2/24)
Checkers ($1.99 from $9.99 until 2/24)
Escape Game Fort Boyard ($14.99 from $29.99 until 2/24)
Table Tennis ($1.99 from $9.99 until 2/24)
They Came From the Sky ($1.99 from $4.99 until 2/24)
Tennis Go ($1.99 from $8.99 until 2/24)
Garfield Furious Kart Racing ($8.99 from $29.99 until 2/24)
Cafeteria Nipponica ($12.00 from $14.00 until 2/24)
Hot Springs Story ($12.00 from $14.00 until 2/24)
Dungeon Village ($12.00 from $14.00 until 2/24)
Game Dev Story ($12.00 from $14.00 until 2/24)
Brawlout ($6.79 from $19.99 until 2/24)
Sniper ($1.99 from $9.99 until 2/24)
The Bullet: Time of Revenge ($2.24 from $4.99 until 2/24)
Pooplers ($4.49 from $8.99 until 2/24)
Plague Road ($1.99 from $14.99 until 2/24)
Mecho Tales ($1.99 from $4.99 until 2/24)
Digerati Best Sellers ($12.99 from $51.97 until 2/24)
Football Cup 2021 ($7.99 from $9.99 until 2/25)
Zombie Apocalypse ($1.99 from $3.99 until 2/25)
Sales Ending This Weekend
99Moves ($2.00 from $2.99 until 2/6)
99Seconds ($2.00 from $2.99 until 2/6)
Abyss ($2.00 from $2.99 until 2/6)
Arcanoid Breakout ($3.99 from $4.99 until 2/6)
BFF or Die ($6.79 from $7.99 until 2/6)
Darts Up ($2.00 from $2.99 until 2/6)
Horror Pinball Bundle ($2.96 from $8.99 until 2/6)
Olympic Table Tennis ($3.99 from $4.99 until 2/6)
Power Racing Bundle ($5.94 from $16.99 until 2/6)
Purrs in Heaven ($2.09 from $6.99 until 2/6)
Rally Rock ‘N Racing ($2.99 from $9.99 until 2/6)
Rock ‘N Racing Bundle ($5.99 from $19.99 until 2/6)
Touchdown Pinball ($2.01 from $2.99 until 2/6)
Cresteaju ($5.99 from $6.99 until 2/7)
Despotism 3k ($2.74 from $10.99 until 2/7)
Farm Together ($15.99 from $19.99 until 2/7)
Food Truck Tycoon: Asian ($1.99 from $4.99 until 2/7)
Isolation Story ($7.49 from $9.99 until 2/7)
Revertia ($4.29 from $4.99 until 2/7)
The House of Da Vinci 2 ($5.99 from $9.99 until 2/7)
Video Poker at Aces Casino ($2.99 from $7.99 until 2/7)
Ziggurat ($11.99 from $14.99 until 2/7)
That’s all for today and this week, friends. In case you’re keeping up on the Shaun Hospital Saga, I got my test results today and they were good. So I don’t have that specific (and very terminal) thing we suspected I might have, but the mystery as to what I do have continues. At any rate, I hope you all have a very nice weekend, and as always, thanks for reading!
