[Review] Sludge Life - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Terri Vellman
Published By: Devolver Digital
Composed By: DOSEONE
Categories: ???
Release Date: 06.02.21

Sludge Life is right. Never before have I played such an odd, grimy game…and yet, I’m hooked. You play as an up and coming tagger named GHOST. Tag everything you can. Speak to everyone. Find random crap that probably isn’t yours. There’s an open world on your islands in the sludge, though it’s almost all sponsored by the corporation GRUG and their brands, who also is polluting the entire earth.

Tag your art wherever you can, it’s easy as pressing the Y button when prompted. You see that camera? Take photos of just random things you find or potential tagging places…wait, didn’t someone lose their camera? Smoke some Ciggy Cigs if you got ’em, puff all the smoke out. Install everything you can on your laptop. Just waste your life away playing videogames, inside of videogames. Or maybe do something productive with your life for once and shoot some hoops. Or just piss off of the top of a tower, whatever. You can literally just fart around with the push in of the left stick.

There’s a lot to do, but if you really don’t want to do any of that, you can just soak in the sludge, er…air. There’s a large cast of strange characters that all have something to say. What they say almost always ends up giving context to something else. This mixed with how the world speaks to you itself makes for one hell of a world building. Watch out for the snake in the toilet!!!

The first thing anyone is going to notice about Sludge Life is how striking it looks. Fitting for a game that on the surface is about tagging, the game has their strong graffiti look to it. There’s a strong offness to how the game looks, from it’s bugeyed characters with plump lips, some of which are anthropomorphic animals, to that weird cat with two buttholes. An internet sensation he is. You can even walk in on a guy looking at the two anuses, who quickly changes tabs as soon as you get close. Of course the game isn’t real, but it has a sort of a real feel to it’s oddball characters, just being mellow. Having life just drift by, as it is.

Drift by is a good way to describe the music too. It’s mostly not there and you’ll probably only hear it on your computer or by a boombox. Either an almost psychadelic feel or like indie music…it’s relaxing.

There’s a lot of options and I implore you to keep them on, like wobbles and a VHS filter, just to add to the atmosphere. Turn those spam popups on in the game to get great ads for all of those sodas and cigarettes you indulge in in game. Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. Consume.

Sludge Life gives off the vibe of being an art project or an elaborate shitpost and I love it for that. It’s an anomaly in a sludgy sea of samey AAA. Minor flaws like deep framerate dips in certain areas at random and the general awkwardness of first person platforming will not and cannot keep me from playing this. Gotta eat all of those slugs…