Welcome to our review of Gem Smashers, a strange new game on Nintendo Switch.
Long ago, the Earth was devastated by a fearsome creature: the scientist IMBU and his henchmen robbed the Earth of all its energy and trapped its peaceful inhabitants in sparkling gemstones. Miraculously, three heroes escaped: BAU, BAM and BOM. They became the Gem Smashers – with impressive leaps and quick spins, they skillfully smash the colorful crystals to free their friends.
When I first got to know this title, I also found out it was coming in a physical for Nintendo Switch, a very strange thing as it seemed like a 5 euro game to me. The pictures were rather unclear how the action would work and I could not shake the idea this would be some sort of spin on a match three game.
At the 20 euros pricepoint, this is anything but a cheap game, so is it worth it?
I think it is not, it is surprisingly not horrible, but I would not call it a must buy either. All the time, your character is basically bouncing between the top bottom, you move it around and you basically need to match the right color on the right obstacle.
Avoid the death cubes, they can kill you! But it is not like a roguelike, you just respawn, the game is time-based, not life-based. This allows you to make many bad moves as you are not really pressured to do things right. At one point, you encounter an inverter cube, that makes you move the opposite way, this was by far the most annoying feature the game brought to the table.
As this game is based on a main hub, shaped like a planet, you just move from level to level, scoring stars along the way to eventually go into the boss fight. The first boss is a giant flying bird that you need to hit from the top, matching the color of his changing hat. While it wasn’t exactly easy, I would not call it challenging either. If anything, it was more the Kirby flair along the way, with some minor more challenging aspects.
All in all, it takes just a few minutes to get the game mechanics under control and after that, it is just bounce bounce bounce. Is it fun? I don’t know, it felt a little repetitive within half an hour of playtime which is not good. It just kept feeling like this was more of a smartphone/tablet game rather than something belonging on Nintendo Switch.
For me personally, I would buy this game for children, but like really young ones. The five-year-olds. It just did not impress me at all and aside from the youngest among us, I seriously doubt many others will like this game.
In conclusion, this game is easy and too expensive at its current price point. Give it to a kid and I am sure he will like it for a few moments, but for me, it was a mostly bad experience. My rating is 20%.
