nZen

Genre: Application

Players: 1

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Review:

nZen is a guided meditation Application released on Nintendo Switch in 2024. This app aims to help users get into a proper calm state of mind for meditation using calm music and imagery, along with narrated scripts based on various related topics.

The presentation here is pretty decent, using simple hand-drawn 2D images with minimal animation backed by your choice of either calming music or environmental noises like light waves lapping at an ocean beach or rain sounds. Curiously, you cannot choose which music or environmental sounds to listen to – depending on which module you’ve selected, this is decided for you. This is particularly frustrating if you have one preferred sound you want to listen to. Also frustrating is that there’s no immediately-accessible mute option if you want to just listen to the voiced narration without music or environmental sounds – to do this, you have to go into the settings menus and manually turn the background sound level to zero, which is irritating.

With this being a RedDeer.Games release, this Application has been split into multiple free DLC modules so the publisher can justify releasing numerous versions to clog up the eShop. Just know that if you decide to get nZen, it doesn’t matter which version you get – all will work exactly the same after you download all the additional free DLC.

Each of the different modules tackles a different topic: Mindfulness Practice, Love Practice, Commence Body Scan Practice, Enter Zen Focus Mode, Start Creative Concentration, Life Purpose Reflection, Start Transcendental Journey, Practice on Concentration, and Box Breathing.

For each of these topics, you’ll have text and voiced narration guiding you through that particular meditation or breathing exercise. The voice can be muted so you can just listen to the relaxing background sounds and read the text, but you cannot choose to not have the text displayed, nor can you change the voice of the narration. I would think that some may find a female voice more calming than a male one, but here you only have the option of one male voice, take it or leave it.

Beyond the lack of options, there’s one more issue nZen has that likely supersedes everything else. I’ve talked about listening, reading, and being guided here, but the one thing I haven’t discussed is any sort of interaction, because it doesn’t exist in nZen. Apart from menu options, there’s no interaction here whatsoever, which raises the question: what can nZen do that you can’t get for free from countless YouTube meditation videos? To this, I can think of only one answer: guided meditation when you don’t have an internet connection. Given the extreme ubiquity of internet access in 2024, the likelihood that this will come in handy for most users seems extremely slim.

In the end, nZen just seems pointless. It’s lacking in options, published in an exploitative way to junk up the Nintendo Switch eShop, and offers virtually nothing of value that can’t be found for free in online videos. I just do not see any reason for this software to exist, and certainly not for you to be paying for it. Just go look up meditation videos on YouTube instead.

tl;dr – nZen is an application for guided meditation, but it’s lacking in options, has been cut up and then pieced together in numerous variations to try to junk up the Nintendo Switch eShop, and offers nothing that you can’t get for free from online videos on meditation. I just don’t see any reason for this software to exist, and I certainly see no reason you should buy it.

Grade: D

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Most Overpriced, The “Who asked for this!?” Award

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