As I’ve played more and more indie games on the Switch, I’ve tried to develop a sense of balance between my responsibility to both the developers and to the people who are looking for help finding the best games. Especially when you’re talking about solo developers, or very small teams working on earlier projects, it can be tough to judge projects harshly. That said, one of the goals in having so many games to be able to compare against is to leverage that knowledge, trying to make judgments at least less arbitrary.

From the get-go, there’s no doubt loading up Aidan In Danger that it isn’t much of a looker. Its very chunky visual style isn’t so uncommon in the budget space, though I’ll at least give some credit for it generally being colorful. Armed with your trusty slingshot you’ll be tasked with slaying enemies, solving puzzles, and doing some generally approachable platforming. As you progress you’ll acquire new critical skills and encounter a reasonable variety of stage types that will likely remind you of titles from the past, which is a plus, though their implementation doesn’t always reach the level of the other games they’re trying to emulate. In general, the style of play feels pretty reminiscent of simpler days in the 8-bit era, which doesn’t need to be a bad thing, but that also kind of feels like the limit of the game’s ambition.

While I’ll give it credit for slowly getting to be more involved, challenging, and interesting as it goes, I do think the game falls prey to the trap of its first impression. The fact is it takes far too many levels to crack into the territory of being remotely compelling, with early levels literally feeling like I could sleep through them in terms of how mundane and generic they were. Even if greatness, or just better-than-average play, could be a few levels away, why wait? There’s no need to coddle the player with extremely basic and dull levels to get them started, they just serve as filler, and since they’re what people begin with they pretty well instantly quash any sense of excitement they could likely have. While Aidan In Danger does at least somewhat redeem itself over time, it’s hard to forgive it stumbling out of the door.