If you love playing retro-styled shooters, the Switch has an absolutely staggering number and variety of them to enjoy. Whether you like side-scrolling, vertical, bullet hell, or just about any sort of flavor, there are likely multiple options out there for pretty well any of them, and a solid sale will usually make them reasonably affordable as well. That makes it a challenge for any new shooter hitting the eShop, even those with a budget-friendly price, and that also makes things challenging for HyperJump.

Playing as a pretty intense vertical shooter, this absolutely poses a challenge for your bullet-dodging skills. Your central ship is on the large side for games of this type, and while it is generally nimble enough to weave through the bullet patterns coming your way, it can feel a tad chunky. Given the fact that your bombs don’t appear to do anything in particular when it comes to offensive damage, they do end up at least being useful for cancelling out incoming bullets if all hope seems to be lost, so you do at least have that on your side. You’ll also be able to switch between normal bullet-style shots and a beam weapon, with each having their own general use depending on what sort of enemies you’re facing.

My issue with the game though is that on just about every front it fails to put its best foot forward. Compared even to many retro-styled shooters it has a pretty unremarkable overall look, and its soundtrack is also quite underwhelming. Worse, in my mind, is that it does a very poor job of helping you understand what’s going on. You can collect cubes which will slowly fill a gauge, but are given no direction on it, so are they worth taking risks to grab or should you play it safe? Considering bombs are normally a formidable weapon for you to use sparingly, these are decidedly underwhelming. What’s the significance of moving between your normal bullets and your beam weapon? Throw in a lack of power-ups to help add some excitement and oomph and this ends up feeling like a minimalist attempt to get into the eShop, more than a game demonstrating an investment in its quality that’s clearly worth a look among plenty of shooters that have more depth and show more honest effort.