Back when I was a kid, I was lucky enough to have parents that did not object to me playing video games. One day, they got me a game boy and one of many games I collected over time, was the original Othello. A very basic take on the game, where you move your tiles and capture the field. I remember playing this game for hours and hours , at one point being a decent enough player to beat the game, even in the hardest of levels.
Fast forward to today, a brand new Othello version, this time on the Nintendo Switch.
Having been used to a very old school lay-out, this game is also quite simplistic on the graphics, having 3 main basic options similar to the Game Boy version.
Play against a computer, with different difficulty settings and wether or not you want to start out with the black or the white colored tiles.
Let me start off by giving some basic information about the game itself:
Othello itself is a strategy game played by two players: Black against White. It is played on an 8×8 board. For convenience, each player begins with 2 tiles in the middle of the board. Each time taking turns, the players need to “capture” the opposite color by jumping over them in a straight horizontal, vertical or diagonal line, each time capturing the opponents tiles.
The game ends when a player is out of tiles or when the board itself is filled, the player with the most tiles, wins the game.
When I started the game on Nintendo Switch, I was surprised at the extensive amount of difficulty levels, being 16, which was a definite step up from the original 3 on the Game Boy.
I started off at the first level, hadn’t played the game in years, so I thought I needed the time to get back into the game. While the game itself proved harder than I remember, I was able to go all the way up to level 6 before suffering my first defeat.
For fun, I tried the hardest level and got pretty much obliterated all the while realizing, this game has a good AI when it comes down to defeating opposing players.
When I started playing the levels in between, it was clear to me that I had gotten rusty on this game and that I would need some serious old school training to up my game.
In conclusion, I think this game is a great buy for a few euros or dollars on the Nintendo Switch eshop and it can be quite tough on the harder levels. I would recommend it mostly to players that like boardgames, chess, checkers, …
If you are a casual gamer, I am not certain if this game is for you, it’s basically a game of tactics and your brain will go into overdrive for the harder levels if you’re not prepared.
Despite not being a game for many gamers, I was planning to give it a 3,5 out of 5, but I am giving it a sweet 4 out of 5, the extended amount of difficulty settings is what pushed it upwards .
