Welcome to our review of Toby: The Secret Mine, a beautiful, yet dark puzzler on Nintendo Switch!
A peaceful way of life in a small village in the mountains was thrown into disorder. Someone has kidnapped most of its residents. A couple of brave hearts tried to rescue their friends but none of them has returned. Little Toby didn’t want to just sit and wait so he decided to find them by himself. He went to the near deep forest but he soon realized this is just a beginning.
Go with Toby on an eerie adventure in a dark and creepy world full of dangerous situations, enemies, and challenging puzzles.
While Toby can also easily be called a platformer or an action game, its beauty lies in the puzzles and how well-balanced they are. The platforming is mostly to let you get used to the main premise of the game, reach the end unscathed.
As Toby, you can jump and perform an action, its roots on smartphones and previous gen consoles cannot be hidden, but it just feels like it could have been made just yesterday. Having these pretty but eerie graphics, the atmosphere is dark and just right for this game.
As you start, you learn to just stroll through the levels solving simplistic puzzles. Push a handle to lift a platform, light up lights to get passage, find hidden passages or captured friends along the way. Not just that, some puzzles even incorporate timing, I remember my first one where I had to activate two different lights in order to pass the puzzle at hand.
It also does not come easy, you really need to think even in some of the earlier puzzles. Usually, the difficulty goes up as you progress, but Toby just has so much variety that you do not realize you are ten puzzles down the line and just focussing on the game. I love games that keep me occupied and feel naturally captivating.
So as a long time puzzle fan, I really love the Nintendo Switch, it has so many great puzzle games and Toby is no exception. It just plays so nice and the puzzles do provide a serious challenge, whether they are timed or just demanding your best handiwork to pass through a field of swordfish jumping up at you. Avoiding them is not just a work of patience, but just overall creepy.
I kid you not, this game is a tribute to a genre that is not only jam-packed with other amazing titles, it delivers a great experience for any lover of the genre. I can not sing its praise loud enough.
In conclusion, Toby: The Secret Mine delivers big time and brings another great puzzle game to the Nintendo Switch. It might just be my new favorite game, it has some serious competition but give it a try. If you like dark and eerie puzzle games, this might be your next favorite game!
