
What happens when you burn up corn on the cob and a CRT television? Or a miniature moon along with a woodblock coyote? Or, gasp, a tiny school bus filled with tiny fake children? There’s only one way to find out. Toss the right combo of stuff in the flames and see the curated conflagration of your nightmares.
#Zen bound switch full#
Nintendo’s Joy-Con eye-contact simulator is a weird package full of odd combinations: Pretend to milk a cow! or eat these invisible sandwiches! But Tomorrow Corporation’s Little Inferno bests it in the weird category, offering up a digital fireplace in which to throw all sorts of items you purchase through the in-game store.
#Zen bound switch portable#
Graceful Explosion Machine turns your Switch into the perfect little portable high score attack machine. And in this shoot-’em-up with hints of Defender and trace elements of Geometry Wars, you not only see enemy craft blow up in vivid Technicolor, but you feel them shatter, due to some careful use of Nintendo’s “HD Rumble.” Each weapon feels different in your hands, as do exploding ships of varying size. Anyway, bombs are so 2000s, not to mention laced with messy connotations in our unfortunate terror-rich world. The return of Super Bomberman to consoles was a welcome one, especially for kids from the SNES or TurboGrafx-16 era. They are to videogames like rom-coms are to cinema: deliverers of reliable serotonin, ever-present balls of gooey fluff. Like Super Bomberman R? Try Graceful Explosion MachineĪh, explosions. But be warned: This slithering sliver of a game has bite. Sumo Digital has smartly co-opted this quirk of nature as their game’s central movement mechanic, building a platforming game not around a human’s jumping calves but a snake’s constricting tube-like body.
#Zen bound switch skin#
Instead they curve and wriggle, pushing along the ground using their skin and muscles as tire tread to propel them forward. Unlike go-karts, snakes don’t zoom from A to Z. Snake Pass rights these wrongs and paints our reptilian friends in a kinder, more colorful light.

Q*bert repeated the coiled look, added fangs, and had this strange snake-ish spring hop after you like some Slinky nightmare. Pitfall on the Atari 2600 drew them as a coiled obstacle to jump over.

In games they usually play the role of the anonymous enemy. In literature or film, they often portend darkness or elicit fear (see: Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark or God’s The Bible). Snakes are not popular videogame protagonists.

Like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe? Try Snake Pass. Here are ten indie titles you can play on your Switch right now. Other anticipated indies are Pocket Rumble, a one-on-one fighter that looks like a Neo Geo Pocket game, and Shakedown Hawaii, from the makers of Retro City Rampage. Some break through and become major hits: Stardew Valley is Switch-bound, as is Towerfall. With E3 looming and a cavalcade of big noisy announcements from established studios around the corner, it’s easy to lose sight of the passion projects eked out by a five-person team with a tiny budget. If you enjoy sliding around asphalt drifting while holding a green shell behind you, perhaps you’ll enjoy slithering around luscious jungles in search of hidden gems. This list spotlights smaller titles paired with a more well-known counterpart. Fewer know the serpentine joy of Sumo Digital’s Snake Pass. Millions of people know and love Mario Kart. And these smaller titles are often the perfect sort of short-burst experience for a console that you can grab and take with you.īut sometimes they don’t get the same level of exposure as Link & Co. Week after week, games from independent studios are filling the gaps between Nintendo’s heavy-hitters, and doing so with aplomb. But those who feared that a post-launch drought might stifle enthusiasm for the system have had little to worry about. Much of this popularity has to do with one or two big blockbuster games from the hardware manufacturer itself, sure. It’s hard to find in stores, and has been the best-selling system since launch. The Nintendo Switch has been on the market for three months now, and at least one thing is clear: people want it.
