[Review] Residual - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Orange Pixel
Published By: Apogee
Categories: Survival, Adventure, Platformer
Release Date: 09.09.21

I’m on the fence on whether or not I like survival games or not. The loop of gathering materials, food, and making sure not to die. If you do it right, it can be a great time, but this can often lie on the first impression. So how does Residual hold up?

First. That robot buddy is the most annoying thing I have probably put up with in a game in a long time. You can’t do a single thing without him speaking with his cracking voice. “YoURe RUNinG oUT OF STamINa”. Yes, I know, please stop reminding me. Please stop talking for every little instance. It as a whole makes the experience very unpleasant.

That out of the way, how is the game otherwise? Functional is a good term. If you’ve played a survival game, you’ll get the gist and know what to do. With Residual, you’ll mine a lot. Get materials to make things, make things to make your mining smoother, etc…You gotta eat though, so collect fruit. You do have teleporters, two to place in places you’ll need to move back and forth quick, but what if you’re too far away and you really need to sleep? Well, light a fire and just doze off. Then the robot will shut up about you being tired.

Everything feels like it’s an extra button press or process just because.

Progress is linear, which caused another issue for me with the game. At one point, you’ll need to plant a machine in a specific place nearby. But no matter what I did, it wouldn’t let me plant it. To which lead the robot to talk more. At this point, I was not having it anymore. I got stuck and no matter what I tried the game yelled at me.

All in all, I was not having fun. I wanted to, I liked the way the world presents itself. Love the spritework. But I was just not enjoying being railroaded and then yelled at by an annoying robot if I did something slightly incorrectly with poor guidance. Maybe I played the game wrong. I do like survival games though, so I’m not sure.