Flip Wars (Nintendo Switch) Review

The rules: pick one of the four coloured robots (or guys in cycling attire), pick mode and map, and start playing! Levels are single-screen arenas made out of tiles; tiles that can be hit, and thus flipped. Doing so changes them to the player's colour, with the winner being the one with the highest count of flipped tiles. A simple concept that needs two things: the analogue stick for movement, and a button for jumping - as well as a couch, as there is absolutely no reason to play this solo.

The battles are fast, exciting, and quite chaotic… but, unfortunately, a bit too chaotic for their sake. To make things clear, while certainly a game of skill, luck also plays a role, and quite a large one, to be honest - although luck isn't exactly the best word to describe what's going on here. A better example would be this: the match starts, everybody but you is flipping around tiles. Suddenly, a few seconds before the finale, you press the big button in the middle of the screen, turn many tiles into your colour, and, quite probably, win!

Some would say that this is a technique, too, and, in many ways, it is - the problem that this creates, however, is that it makes players feel as if all their "hard work" is meaningless. Out of the standard Panel Battle mode, or Knock Out, which has the players "killing" their opponents by flipping the floor under their feet, it's probably the third one, Life Battle, that doesn't have that problem, as each player can be knocked out only a few times, making matches more tense and skill-based.

It might seem a bit silly to judge what is a simple mini-game so harshly, but that's the thing… this is just a mini-game. Ever played Crash Bash, Mario Party, and so on? You've probably played Flip Wars, too! Is that such a bad thing? On its own, no, but the lack of variety at hand is certainly not a good one. Once you've played a few matches, this is officially over - after all, why continue playing the same mini-game for hours upon hours?

…Hell, this doesn't even have the courtesy of having a fourth red-themed "world," although there is a blue, yellow, and green one!