Revenge of the Bird King (Switch)

Like many others, I was intrigued when this retro-styled indie game popped up on the Nintendo Switch eShop, on sale for a measly 9 cents.  I mean, I had more than 9 gold points, so whatever, I grabbed it.  There's a limit to how bad a retro-styled platforming adventure game can be, right?

Well, sorta.

It takes influences from a lot of classic NES titles, namely Mega Man and The Legend of Zelda 2: Link's Adventure.  In addition, there's a central hub area on the world map that serves as a save point and a shop, and you warp back there after completing a level.  So far, so good.

The overworld is where the Zelda 2 influence shows itself.  From the graphics tiles representing areas you can enter, to the black silhouetted enemies that pop up and pull you into a short level if you touch them.  If you've played Zelda 2, it's very similar.  Except that you can pause and select "exit to map" if you didn't want to actually get pulled into that short level by the black silhouetted enemies, which I'll leave as a plus.

The main stages are very much Mega Man-inspired, mostly consisting of a series of screens you navigate without a huge amount of screen scroll involved until you reach the edge of the screen.  There are a few exceptions, though.  There's a stage that takes place on a train that's just one long stage rather than being divided up into screens, as one might expect a train stage to be.  Also, there's a stage where you're flying a vehicle that's an autoscroller.  There are other examples on a smaller scale, but those are the notable ones.

The music is great.  It's very NES-inspired, to go along with the graphics.  It probably uses more sound channels than the NES had available, though.  In the case that's true, they're not real chiptunes.  Still enjoyable though.  I'll take an NES orchestra.

Controls are fairly normal, but have their quirks that are tied to the overall design and premise of the game.  You play as a bird that uses guns.  He has a sword, but you can't really use it in combat too much, it's more for clearing obstructions and knocking armor off of certain enemies.  The main quirk is the guns: they're plants.  You can plant seeds that grow into guns, and as you play through the game, more guns get unlocked.  You have to buy the vast majority of them, but the basic pistol is unlimited.  Just pressing the button grows a gun that you can then pick up and use until it runs out of ammo, but if you hold the button, a turret grows instead.

If you were to go off of everything I've just said, you'd probably be 100% ready to plunk down your money for a neat indie retro-inspired platforming adventure game.  However, there are a number of things that may make you reconsider, that I will now delve into.