The story begins on a couch in a psychiatric office. Olof is a programmer who is mentally "burnt out" and decides to seek professional help.
When therapy goes wrong, Olof becomes a prisoner of his own mind. His fears, frustrations and stress are manifested in the form of the environment and enemies, and they all want only one thing - to capture you forever.
Olof himself is not aware of how much a visit to a psychiatrist will cost him
You take on the character of Olof's alter-ego, Fletcher, who is trying to escape from his mental prison. The story is pointless, the characters you meet even more so, the situations exaggerated, but I guess that's what goes on in a disturbed mind.
These characters represent the dark side of your mind
You are born from some kind of biomechanical womb and immediately spring into action. First task: find clothes and weapons, because you can't wander the world naked, even if it's all just a figment (heh, figment) of your mind.
The game follows a standard principle: go through a maze of rooms, find something that will open your way to a boss fight, defeat the boss and get a new ability.
In the beginning your gun will only be able to fire one shot at a time, but later you will be able to fire shorter bursts. You'll also unlock the double jump, slide and ground pound.
And that's it.
Draw me like one of your French girls
Your health bar is non-existent, the first time you get hit you lose your cowboy hat, the next time you are dead. However, you have an unlimited number of attempts.
The levels are quite simple and there is also a map that you have access to at all times and all the important rooms are marked on it. Fast navigation of the map is possible through snack machines that suck you up and then spit you out in another place, and they also act as save points.
Yes, imagine
Boss fights don't make sense just like this whole game, but at least they are quite a bit more difficult than the standard movement through the game. It is necessary to discover the specific pattern that each of them uses, then you will not have any problems. Or you will, because unlike the rest of the game, there's no room for error and you'll often find yourself in a situation where you're sure you're doing everything right but you still can't win.
Daddy Shark do do do do do do
In some parts, the game will switch to a side scrolling shooter, which gives a bit of variety, but it's still just a matter of understanding the pattern you need to follow, like for example in the situation where you first need to find 4 car tires, only to later realize that they are actually magic and turn the car into a flying killer.
Visually, the retro pixels are beautiful and colorful, the animations of the characters are at times discreet, such as the light bouncing of the hat, up to the exaggerated animations upon death.
I did not notice any performance drops on the Nintendo Switch, which is logical because the game is not demanding on hardware.
The sound is clean and clear, the music gives a retro atmosphere, but you will quickly get bored because it spins in a loop.
Fletcher got a good sweat
Studio Elden Pixels presents this as a micro-metroidvania, which somewhat fits the description as the whole game takes about 3-4 hours, depending on how dexterous and persistent you are.
Each new save file you start randomly rearranges the rooms on the map, but other than that there are no other differences, so I'm not sure you'll be playing again so soon after finishing the game. Maybe after a few years when you want a nonsensical story and quality gameplay.
A copy of the Nintendo Switch game for review purposes was provided by Elden Pixels studio.
