Switchy Road

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: Digital Game Group

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the Twist & Switch Bundle along with Twister Road. It is also included in the Road 3 Pack along with Twister Road and Rally Road – Crashy Car Racing.)

Switchy Road is a mobile-style 2-button Arcade game released as an asset on the Unity Asset Store at some point (it’s unclear when – the most recent update is 2019) as Shape Swipe, brought to mobile devices in 2018 as a low-effort asset flip, and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2019. This game has players in control of an object moving down a winding path, cycling the object through multiple shapes to get it to fit through corresponding gates.

The presentation here is about as simple and basic as you can get, with the game being viewed from an isometric angle and making use of rudimentary simple objects – so simple that I honestly couldn’t tell you if they’re 3D objects or flat images, since they don’t move in 2 dimensions and the viewpoint never changes. This is backed by a catchy beat that helps to keep the otherwise monotonous visuals and gameplay entertaining.

As for that gameplay, I feel like this is about the bare minimum you could have a game do and still consider it a game. You press a button to cycle through a cuboid, a pyramid, and a sphere to get it to fit through gates with rectangular, triangular, and circular holes in them. The game gradually speeds up… and you just keep doing that without end and see how far you get. That’s it.

I should mention that this game has touchscreen controls, but they do the exact same thing as pressing a button, so there’s not much of a point to them. It would have been nice if the game at least gave you the option to assign each of the shapes to a button rather than making you cycle through them, but no such luck. Another thing I should mention is that in addition to the Twist and Switch bundle that contains this game and Twister Road, the eShop also has Switchy Road DeluX, which is basically an expanded version of this game with different skins to choose.

Look, this is another one of those cases where there just isn’t much to say about this game. Switchy Road is a game where you can know everything it’s about within the first few seconds of playing it. It’s not bad, and I could see someone spending a few seconds in it to pass the time, but there’s absolutely nothing compelling or memorable about it. If you can get it super-cheap (preferably in the bundle and on sale), I suppose you might find it an okay time-waster, but you have plenty of other better options for simple games on the eShop.

tl;dr – Switchy Road is a simple mobile-style 2-button Arcade game where players cycle an object through one of three shapes to fit through gates as they automatically approach. It’s an okay time waster for a very short time, but it’s bare-bones and there’s nothing compelling or memorable about it.

Grade: C-

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