When I first saw the name of this game it really took me back a while, to the days of playing the original Crossy Road on my phone. While, in principle, it was really just a somewhat evolved version of elements of some classic games like Frogger, its blocky look, loads of unlockables, and play that worked well on the go helped it to stand out. Now, so many years later, we have a Crossy Road title on the Switch, and once again, the team behind it is proving they know how to put together relatively basic elements that add up to effective fun. 

The best way I can think of to describe Castle is that it’s a mix of many familiar platforming concepts and elements from over the years, thrown into a procedural generation blender, and served to you fresh every time. Broken into very pick-up-and-play-friendly, room-sized stages, you typically won’t spend too much time in any of them, clearing whatever the challenges may be before hitting the exit door and moving onto the next. One element that is a bit liberating is that while you’ll generally be rewarded with a coin for killing enemies, for the most part you’re free to simply ignore and/or avoid them, and the same can be said for coins. While you’ll slowly be able to get new unlocks or periodically buy yourself a heart to try to keep your run alive, there’s no real reward for grabbing them all, though old habits are admittedly hard to break.

If you’d really like to up the chaos factor, you’ll also have the option to play with up to 3 friends locally, or even online. As you’d expect, this tends to make the gameplay a bit of a mess, but with a raucous crowd it can absolutely be a lot of fun. Perhaps it wouldn’t be as well-suited to people of wildly varying skill levels, but if you’re fairly well-matched it should be a good time. As you’d expect from the Hipster Whale team, there’s also no question that the game is loaded with content, whether it be additional characters, a wide variety of hats, or new areas to unlock and conquer, each loaded with some distinctive charm and surprises. Despite the fact that the Switch is loaded with a deep bench of platforming talent, Crossy Road Castle is still able to stand on its own as a pretty accessible, goofy, and surprisingly varied experience, whether tackling it solo or with others.