Streets of Rage 4 [Nindie Choice!] - Right out of the gate I had an admission to make, when it comes to the beat-em-up genre I’m firmly a Final Fight guy, always have been. With that out of the way I’ll quickly make a bold (but having played the game quite a bit, very simple) declaration… even with no allegiance to the Streets of Rage franchise this is hands down the best overall beat-em-up I’ve ever had the pleasure to play. It looks amazing, each of the characters have similar but distinctive moves you’ll need to really dial into to be effective, it supports both local and online multiplayer, it’s tough but not often cheap, and it has a truckload of content to explore and unlock. Not only does it manage this laundry list all in the same package, in pretty well every area I’d say it outclasses the competition (sometimes handily) across the board as well. For fans of the genre this is your Holy Grail, and for anyone who has ever wondered why people enjoy beat-em-ups this is the best example of what it has to offer, though it may spoil you if you decide you like what you see since it stands a fair distance above its competition. If ever there was a brawler that could justify a perfect score it’s this one.
Moving Out [Nindie Choice!] - While the Overcooked series is famously (or is it infamously?) known to many fans of local multiplayer I’ll admit that I consider one of its weaknesses to be broad approachability. There are just enough mechanics and features in it that manage to frustrate more than they generally entertain that after the first few levels I struggled to keep my family and friends on board. Working with some ideas roughly in the same vein, and certainly sharing some aesthetic qualities on a general level, Moving Out can be challenging but I also consider it to be more fair and thus more likely to be fun with a larger audience. In it you and your friends will play as movers who must get all manner of furniture and knick knacks out of a house and onto your truck. No surprise, it quickly can get more complicated as you’ll need to work together to get larger and more awkward pieces out. The good news is that if you’re willing to perhaps forgo a bonus and offend your customers you can also have a ton of fun busting up the place in the process, breaking windows and disregarding best practices in the name of shaving off seconds. Throw in bonus objectives that range from mildly challenging to silly that vary from stage to stage, and while people could get a little more tense early on as everyone learned the ropes for the most part it was a room full of smiles as everyone locked into their niches and got things done. Highly recommended for approachable family fun!
Dread Nautical - While there are a few solid survival games on the Switch they’re a pretty eclectic bunch, ranging from more action-oriented to more strategic and each with their own degree of challenge and some other unique qualities. Dread Nautical continues in that tradition, having you play as one of a handful of different survivors who each have their own strengths and weaknesses with the goal of surviving on a cruise ship full of various zombies. While at first you’ll need to play cautiously solo you’ll get the opportunity to add to your team quickly enough, and as you progress and you’ll need to begin managing what people you encounter that are worth wasting resources on to get help from and who aren’t as helpful. The game’s mystery is also what keeps its pacing pretty light and ideal for portable play, as you work your way through each level of the ship you’ll reach a control room and sound the horn, which promptly knocks you out putting you back where you began, just still with the resources you managed to collect. Does it make a lot of sense? Perhaps not, but like I said it helps define your runs and can prevent you from being overwhelmed if you’re careful in your exploring and smart in how you tactically use doorways and stealth to your advantage in turn-based combat. While it isn’t perfect and can start to feel a bit repetitive over time I appreciate this different take on survival and strategy and would recommend it to people who are fans of the concept of a point where those two genres collide.
Tani Nani - Put simply, there are a load of puzzlers of all shapes, sizes, and even budgets on the Switch. That can make getting eyes on any given one a challenge, especially ones that aren’t in a well-known subgenre like Picross or Tetris-alikes. Tani Nani makes a pretty easy initial good impression with a budget-friendly price point, cute characters who are just looking for love, and gameplay that I may have seen before in some fashion but for me feels more approachable than some of the competition by keeping it simple-ish. Your goal is to select squares on the screen and rearrange them in a way that will allow your characters to first (ideally) grab a crystal somewhere on one of the pieces and then ultimately unite for a cute and loving embrace. While at first this can be pretty simple the challenge is ratcheted up consistently by new mechanics that arrive periodically and by a variety of additional stage challenges that will call on you to work more quickly, efficiently, or in some other specific way on top of simply getting to the primary goal. It’s not a revolution by any means but for a cheap impulse buy it stands up pretty nicely.
Damaged in Transit - Sometimes it’s the games that, on paper, seem the simplest that turn out to be pretty damned challenging as you dig into them. That’s certainly the case for this puzzler, which starts out pretty simply with you changing the direction being pointed to on paths that will instruct your robots on which way to go. Getting you up to speed pretty smoothly you’ll quickly get the hang of things, but then a few levels later the trickiness begins to come into play. Whether needing to quickly shift your focus from one robot to the other to trigger their arrows alternatively between each other or conquering some trick timing segments to suppress spikes or other hazards while getting them on track at times there can almost be a rhythm game and muscle memory thing going on if you get stuck and need to keep repeating things until you get it all right. While it won’t be an experience for everyone if you’re down for a challenge that will force you to keeping multiple plates up and spinning at once it may not be a bad minor investment of your gaming budget.