Wira & Taksa: Against the Master of Gravity

Genre: Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Wira & Taksa is a Platformer with some Puzzle-Platformer elements released on PC in 2020 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2024. This game has you swapping between the two named protagonists as they head off on a quest through terrain that will have them shifting gravity to get past obstacles.

This game’s presentation uses 3D visuals that work well enough, without ever being impressive. However, the sound is another story, with painfully generic music that I suspect is fair use, and character voices (in babble-speak) that are nails-on-chalkboard annoying. You will want to mute this game soon after starting.

The core gameplay here has a decent premise – you can reverse gravity at the press of a button, with some spots changing gravity from horizontal to vertical and back. In addition, you can swap between the two characters with a press of a button, with the big Wira being a big target and moving slowly but wielding a hammer to attack enemies, and the tiny Taksa not having any attack, but being small and fast.

Unfortunately, both of these mechanics work poorly. The gravity-shifting is largely undermined by far too many leaps of faith, and while you can stand in a spot and use the analog stick to shift the camera a bit in a direction, this often isn’t enough to see what hazards may lie there, and this isn’t useful at all while you’re already moving or in mid-air.

As for the character-swapping, neither Wira nor Taksa feel like a full character in their own right – Wira barely fits in many areas you’ll be walking through, leaving you little maneuverability, and he is so sluggish to move that he’s never fun to play, something made worse by terrible hit detection for his attacks making you whiff at times. Meanwhile, Taksa controls fine, and I cannot imagine why this game didn’t just give him an attack and get rid of Wira altogether. And with both characters, there’s little margin for error and one hit can often be all it takes to send you back to the last checkpoint.

In the end, while Wira & Taksa has some decent ideas, the poor game design and terrible sound makes this an ordeal to play, and there’s little reason to do so when multiple other games on Nintendo Switch tread similar ground and are far more enjoyable, such as Ibb & Obb, Minimal Move, and Shift Happens. Play one of those instead.

tl;dr – Wira & Taksa is a Platformer with some Puzzle-Platformer elements that has players moving through dangerous levels by shifting gravity and swapping characters. Unfortunately, this game suffers from frustrating design issues that make the character-swapping feel pointlessly tedious, and that have you frequently making leaps of faith with unforgiving gameplay. And just to make things worse, the generic music and ear-piercing voices will make you want to play the entire thing on mute. You have multiple better options on Nintendo Switch for this sort of gameplay, don’t waste your time on this.

Grade: D

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