Given how much I enjoy games that attempt to inject a little oddball humor into my day, I will say that I think weirdo games are an underappreciated category out there in the eShop. There’s a firm contingent of them to be found, for sure, but I’d love to see more of them regardless. What can be a challenge when considering some of these titles though, is that their premises and gameplay can be quite simple, so then there’s some difficulty in finding a balance between the actual play experience and the humor the developers are able to wring out of the situations or scenarios you’re presented with.

Shoe It All is one such pretty simplistic entrant to the field, pushing a mix of puzzle-solving, some physics-based action, and a healthy sense of timing. Your character will simply sway back and forth on a swingset, even going over the top if you get enough momentum, and your only means of interacting with what’s in front of you is to fling a shoe at whatever it may be. Whether that’s an inanimate object, a person, a structure of some kind, or just about anything at all, if it’s there your goal will be to hit it in some way with your footwear. Simple, right?

Well, not really, and that’s the source of both the game’s strength and perhaps its weakness as well. Somewhat appropriately, this is an experience built around surprises and a bit of humor, so the solutions to any given stage won’t always be immediately apparent, thus the puzzle-like element. The further you progress you’ll run into different variations as well, with many multi-part puzzles, boss battles, and secrets that will even unlock hidden stages. On the one hand that unpredictability can be great. On the other hand, when you’ve experimented quite a lot and don’t feel like you’re making any headway, it can also be a bit confounding since consistent logic and solutions to problems would run counter to the game’s style. I think that mix of some ambiguity in places, and just the repetitive nature of the game’s central action, ends up making it a love-or-hate proposition.