Tag: Recommended

Nintendo Switch Indie Game Recommendation List

Writ­ten 4/27/2025, updat­ed 4/27/25

I’ve invest­ed in and played sooo many indie games for the Nin­ten­do Switch since I first got the con­sole (and con­tin­ue to scour the Recent­ly Released page in the eShop for any­thing else fun), that I’m afraid to see exact­ly how much mon­ey I’ve spent on games in total. While many of them have been well worth it, many of them have been total busts that I wish I nev­er wast­ed my mon­ey on. Here, I will list my rec­om­men­da­tions and non-rec­om­men­da­tions along­side those that are just kind of meh, in the hopes that maybe it will help some­one else. Some of them will have a mini review attached

Games I enjoy are:

  • Point-and-click
  • Farm­ing sims
  • Puzzle/mystery adven­tures
  • Par­o­dy
  • Action

I don’t like:

  • First-per­son view (makes me very ill)
  • Frus­trat­ing game­play
  • If game­play is good, I can for­give bad graph­ics, but not if it’s espe­cial­ly nasty
  • Poor trans­la­tions
  • PvP

I also like Visu­al Nov­els and Kairosoft games, but they will be in dif­fer­ent posts. I won’t add first-par­ty games because the vast major­i­ty of the time there’s a rea­son that they are first-par­ty. They’re GOOD. Almost like a breath of fresh air after play­ing lots of indie games.

** denotes Favorite games in the Yes col­umn and ABSOLUTE WASTE OF MONEY in the No col­umn

Yes

  • Arcane Arts Acad­e­my
  • Artifex Mun­di games
  • **Bar­barous: Tav­ern of Emyr
  • Brok the Inves­ti­Ga­tor
  • **Big Farm Sto­ry — a lit­tle short, but great
  • Break­fast Bar Tycoon
  • Bro­ken Sword 5 — The Ser­pen­t’s Curse
  • Cape’s Escape Game series
  • Cook­ing Fes­ti­val
  • **Crowns and Pawns: King­doms of Deceit
  • Dark­estville Cas­tle
  • **Demetrios — The BIG Cyn­i­cal Adven­ture — absolute­ly hilar­i­ous even if the graph­ics are unat­trac­tive. Not bad, just unat­trac­tive, though I think it adds to the silli­ness
  • Dis­ease ~Hid­den Object~
  • Escape Trick: 35 Fate­ful Enig­mas — though it made me hor­ri­bly ill, this game launched my love of puz­zle games. Walk­through
  • **Ever­dream Val­ley — My Walk­through
  • **Fae Farm — Great, sol­id game. A lit­tle short.
  • Fish­ing Par­adiso
  • FiveBN games
  • **Gar­den Sto­ry — VERY cute, awe­some game. Too short!
  • Goe­tia
  • **Irony Cur­tain: From Matryosh­ka with Love — Pos­i­tive­ly hilar­i­ous, awe­some point-and-click
  • **Kitaris Fables — Sim­i­lar to Rag­narok Online
  • Leisure Suit Lar­ry Wet Dreams Don’t Dry -NSFW though most­ly innu­en­do and lewd art. On the low­er end of the rec­om­men­da­tions, but fun over­all
  • **Lost Hori­zon 1 & 2- good point-and-click puz­zle adven­ture
  • Lost Phone game series
  • Mahjong Sto­ries: Vam­pire Romance — Short, enjoy­able
  • Metrop­o­lis: Lux Obscu­ra — a lit­tle bit of NSFW, intense, short game
  • Mom Hid My Game!
  • **My Time at Por­tia — Play this before San­drock
  • **My Time at San­drock
  • One Night Stand
  • Pantsu Hunter — weird yet fun game
  • Pock­et Quest — Not bad, a lit­tle dull
  • **Potion Per­mit
  • Prison Princess — lots of fan ser­vice
  • **Puz­zle Bat­tler! Mirai — Sur­pris­ing­ly awe­some game
  • **Puz­zle Quest: The Leg­end Returns — Fan­tas­tic just like the orig­i­nal
  • **Root Let­ter: Last Answer — NEATO game. Very much enjoyed it. You can play with either ani­mat­ed or live graph­ics. Insight into Japan­ese life
  • Secret Files games series
  • Sen­ti­men­tal Death Loop — dis­turb­ing yet inter­est­ing. My Walk­through
  • Sher­lock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles
  • **The Tes­ta­ment of Sher­lock Holmes — My Walk­through
  • **Song­bird Sym­pho­ny — My Walk­through (incom­plete)
  • **Spir­it of the Island — Good. Short and repet­i­tive, but fun
  • **Strand­ed Sails: Explor­ers of the Cursed Islands — thought I would­n’t like it at first, but it grew on me, and I had a good time play­ing
  • **Sum­mer in Mara — Good game, a lit­tle slow to start. All oth­er games in the series are not near­ly as good
  • **Tell Me Your Sto­ry — Real­ly nice game. My Walk­through
  • The House of Davin­ci Series — Nice puz­zle games. My Walk­through
  • The Mahjong Huntress
  • **The Raven Remas­tered — Very much enjoyed this game and the music
  • Time on Frog Island — short
  • **True Fear: For­sak­en Souls Series — Final­ly releas­ing the 3rd game this year 2025! My Review
  • **Turnip Boy Com­mits Tax Eva­sion — AMAZING game!
  • Turnip Boy Robs a Bank — Good, just not as good as the first game. My Walk­through
  • **Voez — great music/stepmania type of game
  • **Wel­come to Prim­rose Lake
  • **Yon­der: The Cloud Catch­er Chron­i­cles — REALLY liked this game despite some the short­com­ings

Ehh

  • Car Mechan­ic Sim­u­la­tor
  • Cast­away Par­adise — Review
  • Chex Quest HD — I played the holy heck out of the orig­i­nal and for some rea­son the remake does­n’t hit right. It’s some­how bet­ter yet clunky and while it’s cool to have remade such an old game, did­n’t like it much
  • Com­man­der Keen in Keen Dreams — does­n’t hit like it did in the 90s
  • Elec­tri­cian Sim­u­la­tor
  • Enchant­i­ng Mahjong Match — great if you like speed mahjong games and unlock­ing illus­tra­tions of females
  • Fable­dom - Ehh. The con­trols aren’t clear and seem to be made for PC. Could be a good game
  • Fall of the New Age: Col­lec­tor’s Edi­tion — I real­ly enjoy this type of game, but this was very unin­tu­itive. I’ll still buy these types of games, though because I have an insa­tiable appetite for them. My Walk­through
  • Gems of War — made by cre­ators of Puz­zle Quest. I just dis­like things you have to play online PvP
  • Half Past Fate — Good sto­ry, just put me to sleep at least 10 times while play­ing it. Bor­ing… or relax­ing…
  • Horse Tales: Emer­ald Val­ley Ranch — Could be good. Made me hor­ri­bly ill
  • Hun­gry Shark World — fun for about 30 min­utes
  • Japan­ese Nekosama Escape: The Local Train
  • Jew­el Fight: Heroes of Leg­end: Sim­i­lar to Puz­zle Quest, not near­ly as good
  • Lego Worlds — nau­sea!!
  • Long Ago: A Puz­zle Tale — Mis­lead­ing cov­er art. Repet­i­tive and bor­ing puz­zle game
  • Love on Leave — Inter­ac­tive visu­al nov­el game. Played halfway and then stopped
  • Mon­ster Prom: XXL — Ehhh…
  • Nelke & The Leg­endary Alchemists “Ate­liers of the New World” — Put me to sleep a few times, but over­all fun. Ate­lier series crossover
  • Ocean­horn — Sol­id game­play, just could­n’t get over how it’s a shame­less Zel­da knock­off
  • Par­adise Lost — kind of creepy, just an ehh game. Great graph­ics
  • Rem­i­nis­cence in the Night — it’s okay…
  • Rune Lord
  • Sher­lock Purr 2 - Made me ill instant­ly
  • Storm Tale 2 — match‑3 and hid­den object. Just eh.
  • Sun­seed Island — Game con­tent behind pay­wall. Unable to zoom in and out of map, slow. Could be good
  • The Book of Unwrit­ten Tales 2 — It’s actu­al­ly a sol­id game. I just stopped play­ing halfway because I lost inter­est
  • The Future You’ve Been Dream­ing of — It’s good. Dif­fer­ent. Fan-ser­vicey. Just repet­i­tive to unlock every­thing. My Walk­through
  • Lega­cy Games games — They’re okaaaay. Game­play not the best. At least voice act­ing is bet­ter than oth­ers and graph­ics are good
  • Yes­ter­day Ori­gins — It seemed good at first, and then some­thing both­ered me about it, gave me a headache, and then I stopped play­ing it about halfway through
  • Yooka-Laylee — Want­ed to enjoy it. Just kind of fell flat

No

  • Alba - premise seemed cute, but game is insane­ly bor­ing
  • Buried Alive: Breath­less Res­cue — made me ill imme­di­ate­ly
  • **Cop Car Police Sim­u­la­tor Chase — Ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble game all around
  • Deponia series — As much as I love point and click par­o­dy games, I dis­liked this whole series. I found it to unin­tu­itive and tremen­dous­ly dis­liked the char­ac­ters
  • Detec­tive Di: The Silk Rose Mur­ders
  • Doo­dle Hunt — I dun­no, I thought I’d enjoy some­thing so sim­ple more, but I hat­ed it.
  • Erob­last — I loved HuniePop and thought this would sim­i­lar. I real­ly hat­ed the char­ac­ters and the whole tex­ting thing
  • **Fred­er­ic game series — I just real­ly real­ly hat­ed these games. Wish I’d nev­er wast­ed mon­ey on them
  • Gal*Gun 2 — Way too annoy­ing
  • **Grow: Song of the Evertree — very dis­ap­point­ed by this game espe­cial­ly hav­ing loved a dif­fer­ent game they made
  • Half Past Fate: Roman­tic Dis­tanc­ing — gave it a try, very bor­ing
  • **Har­vest Life — Quit with­in 5 min­utes of try­ing it. UGLY graph­ics, just awful game
  • Hokko Life — Ani­mal Cross­ing knock­off, bor­ing. My Review
  • **Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara — utter dis­ap­point­ment after play­ing the oth­er games in the series
  • Leisure Suit Lar­ry Wet Dreams Dry Twice — Too much back and forth, los­es the spir­it of the first game, not fun­ny. Unin­tu­itive, over­all repul­sive. Does offer the explic­it, raunchy stuff miss­ing from the first game.
  • Let’s School — Con­trols bet­ter suit­ed to PC
  • Life in Wil­low­dale: Farm Adven­tures — Looks like it should be good. Did­n’t make it past 10 min­utes. Char­ac­ter very unat­trac­tive
  • Lit­tle Friends: Dogs & Cats — Hav­ing played Nin­ten­dogs way back when, this does­n’t even come close. Cute, but bor­ing
  • Nora: The Wannabe Alchemist — don’t both­er
  • Ocean Media games — They’re ugly, puz­zles are bad, and over­all, not rec­om­mend­ed despite being one my favorite gen­res. All I do is spam the hint but­tons
  • OmegaL­abyrinth Life — Nope. Thought it would be good. Lots of boobs.
  • **Orange Sea­son — Tried real­ly hard to like this game, but it’s been out for so long and still unpol­ished. Fell asleep sev­er­al times play­ing it. NOT rec­om­mend­ed.
  • Reg­u­lar Fac­to­ry Escape Room — nau­sea
  • Schem­ing Through the Zom­bie Apoc­a­lypse Ep 2: Caged — Eh. Played 15 min­utes.
  • Sprout Val­ley — looked cute, but extreme­ly con­fus­ing with no direc­tion. Tried to like it.
  • Sword & Fairy Inn 2 — Clunky, not fun
  • Sybe­ria 1 & 2
  • **Tardy — just nope
  • VTM Coter­ies of New York
  • **What Comes After — SUPER short game, all you do is talk to dead things. Tries too hard to be deep. Just bor­ing
  • **Wind­bound — Uggghh! I get frus­trat­ed just look­ing at the name. My Review
  • Yeah! You want “Those Games,” Right? So Here You Go! — Yes, I want­ed the pin pulling game. Yes, I played a few lev­els. No, I do NOT rec­om­mend.

Game Review: Hokko Life (Switch)

writ­ten 7/16/23, updat­ed 7/22/23

Devel­oped by Won­der­scope Games and pub­lished by Team 17, Hokko Life is an adven­ture sim­u­la­tion released ful­ly on Sep­tem­ber 27, 2022 for Steam, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One. It cen­ters around the play­er who comes off the train into a dusty, slow town inhab­it­ed by bipedal, artic­u­late ani­mals, and then works to make it more hab­it­able.

Rat­ing: 2.5 out of 5

ESRB Rating/PEGI: E (Everyone)/3

Price: Paid $9.99 out of MSRP $19.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: Only if you are des­per­ate for more games like Ani­mal Cross­ing

One Word Descrip­tion: Copy­cat

Time Rewind Buy Again? No

  • Pros: Cute, sim­ple, easy, design flex­i­bil­i­ty, pleas­ant graph­ics, lulling music
  • Cons: Very long title load­ing, unre­fined, unclear, unal­lur­ing, small, game pro­gres­sion

Review

To be fair, I have not fin­ished the game. In fact, I have only been play­ing “for a lit­tle while” accord­ing to my Switch. Also, appar­ent­ly, the game plays hor­ri­bly on the Switch as com­pared to oth­er plat­forms. Admit­ted­ly, if there was a sto­ry of any sort for the char­ac­ter, then I’ve already for­got­ten. I think it might have been that your char­ac­ter over­slept on the train and the small ani­mal town you arrive in is the last stop. You arrive at night and come across a cafe (that looks eeri­ly sim­i­lar to Brew­ster’s The Roost) where some walk­ing, talk­ing ani­mals are con­vers­ing. The ele­phant (effec­tive­ly Brew­ster) offers you a room. Then the next morn­ing, they say more words and send you out to run around the very small vil­lage, except you were sup­posed to talk to the Tom Nook char­ac­ter, a giraffe name Moss. Pre­dictably, they offer you a house, you have to talk to all the vil­lagers, and then they give you some tools.

Sim­i­lar to oth­er social sim­u­la­tion games, you restore the vil­lage back to vig­or by ren­o­vat­ing, craft­ing, dec­o­rat­ing, fin­ish­ing small quests for vil­lagers, land­scap­ing, com­plet­ing larg­er quests for the town, etc. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, you are able to redec­o­rate neigh­bors’ homes as you please, by mov­ing stuff around.

Although I haven’t spent much time in the game, I feel like I already have beat­en it and don’t need to fin­ish it, because all of it is extreme­ly pre­dictable… And why is that? Because unfor­tu­nate­ly, I sim­ply can­not get over the fact that this game is bla­tant­ly an Ani­mal Cross­ing knock­off. A mediocre knock­off. If you’re going to knock off a game, it needs to either be on par, bet­ter, or offer some­thing vast­ly unique com­pared to the orig­i­nal game. This (so far) does NONE of that. I think I was about one hour in before my brain shut down so hard that it was a chal­lenge to keep my eyes open.

After the ini­tial play, I tried again with gus­to, deter­mined to give it a chance. Some ele­ments don’t make sense, like: the town’s may­or Rosa, a pink, suit-wear­ing pig, tells you that she (he?) does­n’t have a build­ing in town and you can’t talk to her until the build­ing is fin­ished being made. So…she just became may­or? Or just was nev­er there? Was the vil­lage cre­at­ed a few days pri­or? After wait­ing a day or two, you can vis­it her, and effec­tive­ly the may­or just allows you to either alter hous­es or build new ones for new inhab­i­tants, except you talk to the ele­phant in the cafe for new res­i­dents? Play­ing on, the slow pace of the game even­tu­al­ly takes you to the res­i­dent ento­mol­o­gist who likes bugs and gives you a net. Cool. I love col­lect­ing things. Every time you catch a new but­ter­fly, it takes an eter­ni­ty to auto­mat­i­cal­ly load the ency­clo­pe­dia list­ing for it, only to see a ter­ri­ble graph­ic of a gener­ic but­ter­fly with dif­fer­ent col­ors. I soon quit again after real­iz­ing that the game wants you to plant your own for­est in order to col­lect enough wood to make planks to progress fur­ther in the game. I’d already been skip­ping days by sleep­ing so often, that it took any sort of fun away from the game. It has bad flow.

Delv­ing into the past of the game, Robert Tat­nell (accord­ing to Wikipedia), the game’s devel­op­er, orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed the game to be much more like old-school Sim City type of games before mor­ph­ing it into some­thing akin to Ani­mal Cross­ing. Devel­op­ment start­ed in 2017, an ear­ly access released June of 2021 for Steam, and then the full ver­sion released Sep­tem­ber 2022.

Bot­tom Line: So, no, even only 2 hours into the game (I tried to pick it up again today a month after I bought it), I can­not rec­om­mend it unless you’re sim­ply dying for anoth­er game just like Ani­mal Cross­ing or have nev­er played Ani­mal Cross­ing before, or per­haps you have extra time and mon­ey to spare. If I could go back, I would not have bought it.

Game Goods

Cute, Relax­ing: There’s no deny­ing the mind numb­ing sooth­ing qual­i­ty of the game. It’s sim­ple, there are ani­mals, the graph­ics are pleas­ing, there is no killing, maim­ing, guns, or destruc­tion (unless you count felling trees or pluck­ing flow­ers). Sim­i­lar­ly, the music is lulling and not grat­ing. After a long, nasty day at work, this is a great way to just let the mind flow away, con­tent with groom­ing a small town how­ev­er you like.

Detailed: The inte­ri­ors are detailed. You can tell the hard­wood from the wood pan­el walls. There are but­ter­flies, flow­ers to be picked, earth­worms to gath­er. Time and effort cer­tain­ly went into the game.

Famil­iar Game­play: Craft­ing, build­ing, plan­ning, plant­i­ng, chop­ping, dig­ging, fish­ing, buy­ing, col­lect­ing, talk­ing, side quests… This game has every­thing a social sim­u­la­tion game fan wants.

Improve­ments: So far there are some improve­ments to Ani­mal Cross­ing itself, such as small­er grids dur­ing house dec­o­rat­ing allow­ing for fin­er fur­ni­ture place­ment

Game Gripes

Load­ing: I don’t know about oth­er game plat­forms, but the Switch’s game load­ing screen is painful. I actu­al­ly timed it. The main load­ing screen takes an abysmal 1 minute and 13 sec­onds to fin­ish, and then anoth­er 8 sec­onds to final­ly make it to the menu screen. I prob­a­bly could floss my whole mouth in that same time. Then, the auto­mat­ic load­ing screen for new­ly cap­tured bugs is also inter­rupt­ing­ly long.

The dread­ed start­up load­ing bar

Char­ac­ter Design: The graph­ics as a whole are pleas­ant. The ani­mal inhab­i­tants are cute (there’s an inex­plic­a­ble dis­dain that I have for them, though… Maybe it’s the copy­cat thing). The char­ac­ter you play, how­ev­er, is, well, ugly, imo. Some­thing about the eyes, maybe? The col­or? There isn’t much cus­tomiza­tion avail­able at all. And I have to look at them the whole time. Ugh.

Small Things: You can’t run, there’s only 1 speed. There’s no quick way to put away the tools. The game isn’t clear about whether or when it autosaves, and there’s no set Save but­ton. It’s hard to tell which house is whose… Espe­cial­ly mine which is the only one with a mail­box. The cur­sor speed for redec­o­rat­ing or plac­ing features/furniture is too fast, mak­ing it hard­er than nec­es­sary to accu­rate­ly posi­tion items. Lack of refine­ment in areas. For exam­ple: I was chas­ing a but­ter­fly and could­n’t catch it because it flew through a build­ing.

Unal­lur­ing: As I men­tioned in the review sec­tion above, I found it extreme­ly dull. I would not have bought the game if I thought I’d be wast­ing my time. It had already looked like an Ani­mal Cross­ing knock­off, and I still bought it with high hopes. Despite the decent graph­ics, some­thing about the game is sim­ply unap­peal­ing. My brain shuts off com­plete­ly. Like, go-to-sleep shut­off. It extends beyond bor­ing to an irra­tional loathing for a rea­son I can’t seem to com­pre­hend. I don’t care what the char­ac­ters are say­ing (and I total­ly under­stand how long it took some­one to come up with and write the dia­logue!) and I don’t care about them or the main char­ac­ter, at all.

Game Pro­gres­sion: The flow of the game is not smooth. Some parts work fine, but oth­ers are sim­ply too slow and mun­dane. Oth­ers feel forced. Most­ly, it was slow. Each piece of equip­ment takes too long to be unlocked. I see fish that beg to be caught, but I don’t even have a shov­el yet, kind of deal. It takes days before the next piece of equip­ment or new craft­ing recipe becomes avail­able.

Conclusion

Not gonna beat a dead horse here: I don’t like this game, and I don’t rec­om­mend it. I will, how­ev­er, because I paid for it, and also for the sake of the person(s) who like­ly poured their heart and soul into it, TRY to progress fur­ther. I will update if my thoughts change.