Casual-friendly fare is no stranger to the Switch, and since its touchscreen capabilities are rarely something that comes in handy for hardcore gamers I’d think this is mostly by design. While the majority of people playing games on the Switch are likely into more engaging fare, there’s no reason that casual parents or people looking for a break from the intensity can’t have some fun with it as well. Fortune Play is in the mold of what are essentially puzzle-oriented adventure games, focusing mostly on a variety of hidden object puzzles but also diving into other styles to keep from being predictable. The problem is that in the case of this specific title there are some poor design decisions that have made it a little more needlessly frustrating than its brethren.

The story binding everything together is at least a decent, if a bit overdone, one. A young actress who has her sights set on more ambitious goals is invited to perform for a wealthy and regal man. But unfortunately he has more nefarious things in mind for her. Sure, it’s a bit cliche but at least it makes the puzzles and problem-solving feel a bit more driven by necessity than they can be in games of this kind at times. In addition, outside of the admittedly-dated video sequences that show some serious signs of compression artifacts the presentation is also plenty detailed, with most of the still screens looking both colorful and detailed.

Unfortunately, for a game of this kind, it’s the implementation of some of the puzzles I take issue with. There’s just a sloppiness here in places, whether it’s the fact that accidentally leaving a puzzle area causes all of your progress to be lost, or how difficult it can be to highlight key puzzle elements to manipulate them at times. The fact that there are pretty consistently little issues of these kinds can be discouraging, especially since I don’t typically run into these sorts of aggravations with this subgenre as a whole. Just some additional time spent to be thoughtful about how people would interact with certain puzzles and elements or some more thorough QA could have been helpful to smooth over some rough spots.

Given that, for the most part, from title to title these sorts of casual puzzle games don’t typically differ that much in the amount of content or their general presentation, even some small issues like these quickly knock it down the list of titles worth checking out in the space. Yes, you can muscle through the rough spots and keep going, but unless you’re a completionist simply playing everything in the space this seems like a specific title you can skip over since it is more troublesome than most.