Review #046: Trouserheart (Nintendo Switch)
Updated: Oct 8, 2019
Reviewed By: Allan J.
Developed By: Kyy Games
Published By: Kyy Games
Category: Action
Release Date: 10.04.2018
Download Trouserheart from the Nintendo eShop here.
Are You Ready To Break Stuff?
I know I’m ready—wait… it started already? I wasn’t ready! There’s not even a title screen here… what the heck? So Trouserheart just basically gets right into it and doesn’t waste any time explaining much about itself. You choose which difficulty you want, either Casual or Hardcore—with optional perma-death for either mode—and then you’re off… or rather, your trousers are off. We start our adventure by being awakened from a nap by a thief making away with your trousers, then quickly taking chase to find the culprit.
Hack, Rinse, Repeat
As you embark on your adventure, you travel through various stages, which consist of one-screen rooms with different enemies, crates, and bushes to bash with your sword. Once you clear one room, you move on to the next room for more of the same. Once you clear a set number of rooms, you get a message telling you that you have cleared the stage. Sometimes it’s after you defeat a boss, and sometimes it just seems like the programmers just randomly decided they were done with that level, and just moved on.
Admittedly, hacking and bashing your way through whatever random enemies or objects you encounter is satisfying to a degree, but after a few stages of the same thing over and over again, this game begins to seem like a one-trick pony. The boss fights, while slightly more challenging than the regular enemy battles, are still pretty much the same thing each time. The further you get through the stages, the bosses start to add small things to their routine; for example, while one boss may simply lunge at you with their sword, then disappear to rinse and repeat, the next boss might lunge at you with their sword in the exact same manner, shoot a slow-moving projectile in a random direction, then disappear to rinse and repeat. It’s thrilling stuff.
All These Styles To Choose From…
Trouserheart is another game following the recent trend of retro-style audio/visual design in modern gaming, but while most games that do this are cute and charming, Trouserheart seems to have chosen to emulate one of the clunkier styles of retro design… early Nintendo 64 polygon-style graphics. While the details are certainly more crisp than a true N64 game, it still seems a bit sloppy-looking to me. The controls, however, are very smooth and responsive, and while there’s not a lot to the mechanics of it all, the pieces all seem to fit with each other on the screen.
Everything seemed to work as designed, but there were a few glitches I experienced. One glitch occurred during a boss battle, where I was killed. When you are killed, the room you are in re-loads and, if all goes as planned, the enemies re-load as well. During the boss battle, however, the room re-loaded, and I found myself alone in the room with no boss to fight, and no way to get out of the room other than resetting the software. This—along with other odd details like no title screen or tutorial options—just makes Trouserheart feel like it was never truly completed, but rather, just thrown together and released.
Wrapping Up
At the end of the day, Trouserheart is good for a few minutes of hack and slash amusement, but beyond that, it’s just not very good. There are not very many levels, but there may as well have just been one level anyway, considering how similar they all are to one another. Maybe this title just wasn’t meant for me? If you want to see for yourself, it’s only $7.99 on the eShop, so it won’t set you too far back. As for me, I will not likely be returning to this game any time soon.
Final Score: 5/10
Download Trouserheart from the Nintendo eShop here.
Follow Kyy Games
*Review Code Provided by Kyy Games