Thoth

Genre: 2-Stick Shooter

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Thoth is a 2-Stick Shooter originally released on PC in 2016 and ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2020. This is a minimalist game where players play as a small circle shooting squares that chase them and try to collide with them.

While “minimalist” doesn’t always mean “terrible presentation”, in this case there really isn’t much to look at here. Basic geometric shapes are about all there are to see here, although the squares do morph into 3D polygonal shapes after they’re shot. But yeah, still a whole lot of nothing to look at here. Not a lot to listen to either – just weird, experimental minimalist music pieces that seem more like creepy environmental sounds than anything.

Okay, but a minimalist game can still be fun, right? Sure! But… not in this case. Thoth just doesn’t have much to it. Dodge the squares and shoot them enough to overpower them (and they’ll still chase you even after you do so). That’s about it. There’s a little nuance to it because your ship slows down when you shoot, and the behavior of the squares and stages changes with each stage, but… yeah, that’s pretty much it.

Oh, one other thing – die too much, and you’ll be tossed back to an earlier stage. As you can imagine, this is pretty frustrating, and adds to the already-repetitious nature of the game.

There are some games that use minimalism to great effect, but not Thoth. Thoth looks boring, plays boring, and adds frustrating tedium on top just for good measure. There are plenty of good 2-Stick Shooters on the Nintendo Switch, don’t waste your time with this one.

tl;dr – Thoth is a 2-Stick Shooter with a minimalist look and minimalist gameplay, and unfortunately here that “minimalism” translates into “boring”, with “tedious” and “frustrating” thrown in as well. Don’t bother.

Grade: D

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