Vroom in the Night Sky (Nintendo Switch) Review

Vroom in the Night Sky does not make the best first impression, with its horrendous Engrish, strange low-quality graphics and, frankly, tedious gameplay. It opens with the playable Magical Girl, Luna - or Tsukie, maybe; the translation is so awful that it gets confusing - jetting at a breakneck speed of around 30mph through a horrendously bad looking environment that looks like it was built by a bedroom developer for a mobile game. "Are you not scared of high?" the Engrish translation guesses what she is trying to ask her little magical familiar that floats along beside her. "It is too late now," replies said familiar.

From this stumbled start, it never really gets much better. This self-proclaimed "Magical Bike Game" has only eight stages to play through, all with the exact same mechanics: a magical gate is set in each stage, a set amount of "Keystars" have to be flown through or shot to unlock this gate, and then fly through to complete the stage. There's also "Stardust" to collect - the in-game currency - and bonuses to be had by performing tricks, or shooting down rival Magical Girls. These tricks are thing like "Magical Hard Breaking!" which would be turning while breaking or "Magical Boost!", very simple and not very fun to perform or difficult to pull off.

The stages themselves look dull and uninspired - tiny, boring areas, filled with ugly static models to avoid. Lots of indie games capture an aesthetic from a bygone era, bringing along the feel and nostalgia of some of the golden ages of gaming. It's hard to see just what aesthetic developer Poisoft was trying to bring along here. Perhaps "cheap phone game" or trying to live up to studios like Digital Homicide? It looks like one of the multitude of games currently clogging the arteries of Steam, made by bedroom developers from purchased assets. Then the presentation is made even worse with the unbelievably bad Engrish. Purchasing a bike will mark it in the shop with a "Buyed" sticker, during stages Luna and rival girls yell out at each other in baffling snippets such as "Admit defeat!" being met with "I am not defeat!" and so on.

 There is a set of "Trophies" to acquire over the eight stages. 20 trophies in all, which consist of things like buying different bikes, completing stages within certain times, and collecting a set amount of stardust. Completing each of these gives a reward, from unlocking new vehicles and stages to fly through, all of which can be completed in an hour or two, with no real challenge whatsoever. The faster vehicles give a glimpse into what could be a fun game if it had completely different stages that utilised dynamic environments and, maybe, completely different mechanics...

What can Vroom in the Night Sky do with the Nintendo Switch hardware, then? What functionality can it leverage to make this stand out against what it would be like if it was released on some other platform? Nothing. The only thing it attempts to make use of is the Joy-Con HD Rumble, claiming to "simulate different types of engines and impacts." It just has a constant rumble of differing degrees that is frankly just annoying after a few minutes…