Creepy Road
Nintendo Switch

Developed By : Groovy Milk
Published By : Groovy Milk
Category : Platformer, Shmup, Arcade
Release : Mar 01, 2019

Creepy Road on the Nintendo Switch tells the story of Flint Trucker, a man journeying to his home town in hopes of seeing his sweetheart Angelina. The second to last thing that Flint expects to happen is getting into an accident on the way home. The last thing he expects, is to wake up to see the world’s gone mad. Sadly for him, both these things are very true, and while he continues to press onward on foot, Flint finds himself surrounded by people and animals – yes animals – that have gone crazy. Now, Flint must take up arms to keep himself alive long enough to get back to his love, and just might find himself saving the world in the process.

The game takes the form of a 2D, side-scrolling shoot-em-up that will bring any fan of the genre back to the good old days. Controlling Flint and navigating the levels is entirely done with just two buttons on the Switch : the left Joystick and the B button, which ends up leaving every other button focused on your weapons and attacking with them. And this is just fine because the levels themselves are fairly easy to navigate, since for the majority of them you’ll just be traversing the ground, encountering very minimal platforming elements.

As for weapons, Flint will always tote around a trusty revolver which has unlimited ammo. Through the levels you’ll be able to pick up and brandish a number of additional weapons like shotguns, machine guns, a strong-fisted punch, and even rocket launchers. All of these extra weapons you’ll pick up have a finite amount of ammo, but each time you walk over the same weapon you’ll add ammo to your loadout and it is more than enough to work with. You also get access to some throwable weapons such as grenades and molotov cocktails, all of which again have a finite amount that can be used, but these bad boys will pack a bigger punch when you need some saving.

The small arsenal that you can bring along with your one-man-army is going to be much needed with the plethora of enemies you come across. It just so happens that a circus was in town where Flint crashed, so you’ll come across all sorts of animal circus acts like bears on unicycles and tigers, you’ll also encounter animals relative to the environments you travel through. Going through the woods? Expect to see some boars and rabbits. Local farm? Suddenly the cows can walk upright and tote mini-guns for udders.

While the enemies are fun and enjoyable, it’s the boss fights in Creepy Roads that really stand out. These enemies are massive, practically filling the arena areas that you fight them in. Don’t fret, all it takes is some patience and attention to detail, and figuring out their patterns and weaknesses is a cakewalk.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing this game. The music in each area is different, allowing for deeper immersion to each level, and the hand-drawn graphics are some of the most beautiful that I’ve seen in a while. Every bit of the gameplay mechanics is just as fun, and I only had one real issue with things. At some points, it’s possible to jump with Flint and aim downwards to clear yourself a spot for landing if there’s a big pack of enemies. However, to aim downwards, you need to do so with the left joystick which is already dedicated to movement so it makes this shift kind of awkward. But, when I say this is the only issue that I had, I mean literally the only one. This game is a lot of fun to play, and something that should absolutely be experienced by as many people as possible. If you love shmups, you won’t want to miss this game at all.