[Review] Golden Force - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: StoryBird Games
Published By: No Gravity Games (Digital) VGNYsoft (Physical)
Categories: Platformer
Release Date: 01.28.21

Beautiful spritework, high replayability, good platforming an action. Golden Force checks off all of the requisites for being one of my favorite games so far in 2021.

I’m so sick of seeing indie games with lazy, cheap looking spritework. I’m sure it’s a stylistic choice more often than not, but it often comes off as a lack of talent. Golden Force says to hell with that and is full of gorgeous spritework and animation. Even before you get into the meat of the game you’re seeing this all on display. It’s some of the best spritework I’ve seen recently. It’s colorful, but not gaudy looking. It doesn’t even have weird inconsistencies. It’s what I’m looking for.

Of course, this doesn’t mean a thing if the game is trash, but luckily for all of us, this is competent release. Lets go through the stages, collect these coins and shells, get all the money we see, and fight all of these monsters. Try not to get hit, you don’t have too much HP, and the game has a nice combo system. Just keep getting those hits in without getting hit. Smack enemies around, throw them in the air, charge attack them into others, or just destroy the helpless cats like a monster. You’ll be getting a lot of money if you keep this up. What does money do for you in Golden Force in the shop between levels though. You might see powerups to get elemental themed moves, an item that revives you on death, temporary invincibility, all of that fun stuff. You can buy and hold on to these with enough money. The collectable coins and shells in stages can be used to trade in the shops for permanent heath and combo upgrades too.

Some stages feel long, some are rather bite sized and gimmicky. It works well to spice up the platforming. At the end of each island has a stage that ends in a huge boss fight. It might be a bit tricky at first to figure them out, but the game has infinite lives, so the only thing lost when you keep losing is money earned in the level…and pride. If you don’t care about any of that though, then the game is perfectly manageable.

You have four different playable characters, each with a few alternate colors. They all have unique animations and attacks, including special attacks, but I wasn’t sure if they actually had different stats when playing. The game happens to have multiplayer, which I always like to see when you have more than one character. Just play as whoever you like the most.

I don’t have an exceedingly long list of the things to really say about Golden Force outside of the fact people should play it. As soon as possible. If there was one flaw in the game, it’s that it has slowdown every now and then for very brief moments, but it’s never too much to ruin the experience.