Given that there are plenty of hard-hitting, gritty, and tough games out there in the eShop made for players who like to tackle big challenges and darker themes, it would be wrong to begrudge those looking for something on the lighter side. The thing is, when handled correctly, it turns out you can make titles that are a little more challenging while not losing their grasp of the sillier side of things, something the Human Fall Flat series has pointed out quite thoroughly. But what if you could take a well-known more adult title like Grand Theft Auto and then capture just portions of its essence, making it sillier and more lighthearted, but maintaining some things like its rough mission structure and somewhat open-ended sandbox nature?

At least to some extent that appears to be what the developers behind Wobbly Life set out to do, and to some degree they were successful… you’ll just have to be patient with the results at times. Starting out your character is promptly thrown out of their house, being told to get a job. You’ll complete an initial mission to make some cash and get the general hang of things, but from there you won’t be getting a load of direction. Instead, you’ll be encouraged to explore, take a ride in a fast car, complete more jobs, make some money, and just live the wobbly sort of life you’d like. If you’re able to find a partner in crime to enjoy it all with locally it will likely stay interesting longer, though I have no doubt even some will find it to be a blast to just run around in solo.

All that said, there are some issues where the game’s ambition obviously outstrips what it was able to accomplish, at least on the Switch. If you’d like to go with more directed fun, the Arcade area has a few modes which include some that could be competitive fun, but with only 2 people it’s simply not going to be terribly thrilling for long. If you don’t have a friend locally, my personal attempts to enjoy Online play were also not terribly encouraging, in some cases resulting in the game crashing, but even when connecting to other hosts seeing the performance usually feeling dicey at best. In particular, trying to do anything higher-speed like driving became a complete mess, as the delays in response would have you careening all over, pretty well defeating the point of the exercise.

The shame here is that my impression from watching people playing on PC, is that while the game has quite a bit of potential, it seems that this port, whether limited by the Switch hardware or the ambition of the conversion, just doesn’t meet the same standard. I think there could be a place for a game in the vein of the classic Simpsons Hit and Run in the eShop, that could repurpose elements of a game like GTA but give them a lighter and sillier feel, but the experience still needs to perform well on the platform you’re playing on. There are some elements here, but it just can’t pull things together well enough to be compelling in the end.