Typically when I review games I’m very focused on the overall experience, the vibe, and whether it is able to grab me quickly and then hold onto my attention. Sometimes, however, there are titles that stumble out of the gate so badly that it takes all I can muster not to be laser focused on their trainwreck in progress, whatever the cause of it may be. Considering that I’m normally a pretty easy sell, not knocking down my opinion significantly for performance issues or shortcomings as long, as they don’t interfere with my enjoyment, the fact that Seed of Life struggles so much with its technical performance that I’m taking the time to specifically call it out should tell you something.

The story, I suppose, has some bits of originality to it, though it does feel a bit familiar in some of its themes. In the end you’re a young girl on a mission to save her dying planet, though as far as you can tell you may be the last native inhabitant left on it anyway. It’s an adventure that will involve exploration, puzzle solving, some stealthiness, and a fair amount of patience. The thing is, on the gameplay end of things this doesn’t seem to be a horrible effort, just perhaps a somewhat bland one. The problem lies elsewhere.

What cripples the experience is that this is simply a pretty terrible port to the Switch. What’s odd though is that it doesn’t even really excel in any area visually, and yet the game’s performance is stuttery and pretty awful all around. Normally when the performance is struggling you’re at least seeing an attempt at graphics that are pushing the Switch hardware to the limit, but in this case the perhaps PS2 era geometry and muddy textures aren’t going to inspire anything more than a bit of puzzlement. I’ve seen poor game optimization on the hardware before, but this may be among the worst, mainly because visually there’s so little positive to show for it.

While I wouldn’t imagine this will be a stellar experience on any system, I’d say that if you have any interest in the game whatsoever you should play it elsewhere. Particularly given its eye-popping price point when paired with the product that is delivered, this is honestly a bit of an embarrassing effort. Perhaps it could be better optimized and patched, but historically I’d say that only happens with games that show promise and have successfully sold, making further development investments worthwhile. This just feels like a sloppy port hoping to eke out some profit for a minimal level of effort and care.