Melonizard

Genre: Stealth

Players: 1

.

Review:

(Note: This game is included in 2D Indie Bundle, along with Airship Defender, Boxerpunk Stories, Chip and Charge, Enduring Mountain, Fightro, Frogice, Frogy World, Hopping Bunny, Invasion Waves, Kattish, Lost Chiko, Mechapunk, Pandaty, Pipe Dream, Rattyvity Lab, Sector 98, Sentry Paragon, Skeljump, Tempoknight, Tiny Whaley, Turret Lab, Vigour, Wampir Dungeon, Webgeon Speedrun Edition, and Yello Adventures.)

Melonizard is a Stealth game released on Nintendo Switch in 2023. This game has you moving a lizard with a cane as he tries to slip by other animals unnoticed to reach a slice of watermelon.

The presentation here is fairly simple, using 2D pixel art visuals with the only sound apparently coming from your own footsteps, your interactions with the levels, a light sound of waves crashing in the background, and with a brief fanfare whenever you complete a level or get caught.

Much like the visuals, the gameplay here is extremely simple. Get to the watermelon in each level without getting caught. The game gradually introduces new elements like bridges you need to repair, different kinds of enemies to avoid, and so on, but your main interaction with the game always remains very simple.

Which is a kinda’ nice way to say that this game is pretty boring, slow-paced, and that players aren’t given much choice in how to approach problems. What’s more, this game commits one of the cardinal sins of stealth games – when you get caught, you automatically fail the level and need to restart. Ugh.

I enjoy Stealth games, but I have little patience for bad, tedious, boring Stealth games, and that’s what Melonizard is. This game is far too simple and tedious to be of interest even to fans of this genre, and I recommend you just skip it.

tl;dr – Melonizard is a Stealth game where you play a lizard trying to slip past other animals to get to a slice of watermelon. This is an extremely simple, plain, and honestly pretty boring Stealth game, and while the game does gradually introduce new elements, it never really gives players much freedom or variety to tackle problems in their own way. What’s worse, this is one of those Stealth games where getting caught means you automatically fail and need to restart. Do yourself a favor and skip this one.

Grade: D

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