Flat Heroes (Nintendo Switch) Second Opinion Review

By Shane Jury 06.04.2019

Review for Flat Heroes on Nintendo Switch

Founded in 2016 and hailing from the city of Manchester in the UK, Parallel Games are a more recent developer to board the Switch Indie train. Breaking off from TTGames, famous for their brand of LEGO-themed licensed titles, the team at Parallel wished for a new adventure in making smaller more polished experiences, with Flat Heroes being the first result. Initially an Early Access release on Steam, it has since found its way over to Nintendo Switch's packed eShop listings. Is this tiny cube a true survivor, or will it vanish into the crowd?

For a genre placement, Flat Heroes is difficult to pinpoint with certainty. Descriptively, a simple-looking puzzler on the surface, it contains many other staple elements, platforming action and timed survival being chief among them. Its primary concept revolves around a small, 2D square of a chosen colour, within a large grid of varying size. Set to a countdown clock, the objective is to avoid all hazards by any means possible.

The square is incredibly agile and skilled, able to grip to walls, double jump, and make use of a Burst attack later on to clear obstacles. It is also absurdly easy and satisfying to guide around no matter the control setup, be it Docked or Portable, sideways Joy-Con, or Pro Controller, and any one-hit death leads to an instant restart, making for an ideal on-the-go quickplay experience.

Screenshot for Flat Heroes on Nintendo Switch

Though the visual identity of Flat Heroes is one of utmost simplicity being coloured shapes and lines, and the musical content consisting of one looped track, the effective use of luminescence design between Campaign worlds, and the earworm nature of that single melody prevents any sense of debilitating repetition. Adding onto that is the surprising number of varying concepts introduced in later levels of the main campaign mode that do far more than most would expect from a simple premise, adding new enemy and hazard types in succession.

'Perfect For The Switch' is a phrase very commonly heard for most games, but Flat Heroes' strong Multiplayer aspects undoubtedly compliment this thought process. Every mode in the game is playable with one-to-four players on the same machine, be it the main Campaign with its 10 Worlds to cooperate through, Survival which offers a daily challenging level to try and the goal of being last square standing, and the aptly-named Versus that can make use of AI blocks, and offers an array of competitive options. The simple art-style for the game goes a long way for following the action on screen regardless of participant numbers. Though the main campaign levels are reasonably lengthy, it'll be the Multiplayer support that will keep buyers coming back for more.

Screenshot for Flat Heroes on Nintendo Switch

Cubed3 Rating

9/10
Rated 9 out of 10

Exceptional - Gold Award

Rated 9 out of 10

Flat Heroes is the epitome of doing so much in a game with so little on the surface. A basic concept of shapes and lines becomes an addictive and satisfying multitude of cat-and-mouse scenarios that not only offer a great deal of enjoyment for a solo play, but truly shine with friends in play.

Developer

Parallel Circles

Publisher

Deck13

Genre

2D Platformer

Players

4

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  8/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date None   Australian release date Out now   

Comments

Comments are currently disabled

Subscribe to this topic Subscribe to this topic

If you are a registered member and logged in, you can also subscribe to topics by email.
Sign up today for blogs, games collections, reader reviews and much more
Site Feed
Who's Online?
Azuardo

There are 1 members online at the moment.