A Look inside the Collective: Switch

Hello everyone, and welcome to the first ‘A Look inside the Collective’, where I talk about the various games that show up on Square Enix Collective — a platform where indie devs submit games they are working and Square Enix does an evaluation of them.

If the company approves it, based on quality and Square’s faith they will be able to complete the project, they put it up on their main page. And a new game gets featured each week.

Members of the community then say whether or not they would be willing to fund the game via some kind of crowdfunding platform. Based off this community reaction (as well as their own judgement), Square will continue to promote — and possibly help publish — a set number of games per year. 

Each week I’ll be taking a look at the game Square is currently promoting. The first part will be a bit more of an objective analysis, and I’ll finish off by giving my opinion on whether I’d like to see this be one of the games Square promotes. 

All that said, let’s look at this week’s game: Switch.

Switch as a 2D puzzle platformer where you progress through levels without defeating enemies. A ‘non-violent’ game, as they call it. 

As you see in the image, you have as sort of ‘double jump’ ability, though that isn’t quite an accurate description. You gain an additional jump when you change sizes, which you can seemingly do once. Watching the demo play through available, your ability to change sizes (and thus gain an additional jump) appears to reset after jumping off a wall, and there doesn’t seem to be a limit on how many times you can do that. 

Different worlds within the game are supposed to have their own unique features to keep the areas feeling fresh — but no specifics were given, and the demo only featured a run through part of one world. 

What is shown looks well-made, though I am not really seeing anything I haven’t seen done before. Whether or not the game is going to do something truly unique remains to be seen until more is known about the different worlds. 

The story details of the game are rather vague. You are named I — big I when you’re larger, little i when you’re smaller — and you have apparently lost all your friends for some reason. You go on a quest to find them, and your conscience debates with you about whether you should do the right or wrong thing. 

So what do I think?

I think the game play looks decent, but at the same time I’m not really seeing anything all that unique to make the game stand out. 

This holds equally true for the art design. I’m not saying it’s a bad looking game. It looks decent enough, but nothing jumps out at me. The only real selling point that could be left is the story. And I’m not liking what we have so far.

The actual plot and what happens is pretty vague, and the fact they go out of their way to state in their pitch is that there is an argument between ‘the right and wrong’ choice going on makes it seem like it will lack any kind of subtlety. Though considering your name is ‘I’, they kind of lost any semblance of being subtle right out of the gate. 

They do have a demo available to try, though playing just kind of re-affirmed how the game looked from the pitch — just kind of mediocre. 

This is a game I would pass on trying to build up on Square Enix Collective. There are a lot of other games that actually have some interesting things going for that could really benefit from being among the limited number of games Square Enix Collective help out each year. 

If you are interested in suggesting non-collective related kickstarter/indiegogo games you’d like me to look at, feel free to comment either here or send me a tweet @The_Mad_Monarch.