Violett (Nintendo Switch) Review

Violett has a very charming visual style and gorgeous soundtrack that can be left playing on repeat without growing tiresome. It also features all the regular mainstays of the point and click genre that make games of that ilk so desirable. Players can guide the protagonist around using regular controls, or slide the Switch out and make use of touch for what should have been the ultimate in intuitive control. However, the entire experience is riddled with glitches, and, unfortunately, Cubed3 even faced a major game-breaking issue that meant the adventure could not be finished, and despite raising the matter with Forever Entertainment, no reply has been forthcoming and no updates have arrived via the eShop since trying this out late in 2017.

It is a real shame, because there is actually a lot to love about the adventure, if overlooking the inventory bar at the top getting constantly confused about whether you are using touch or regular controls and the slow character movement. Go round, collecting key items and find the best way to use them around the attractive locales visited. There is no voice work or even text included, so players are tasked with trying to also decipher what the next objective is merely by watching the reaction of the bugs and critters Violett meets. At first it is off-putting, but proves to be charming in the long-run.

Again, though, problems plague the game. During the review process the inventory bar never depleted, meaning even when items had been used, they would not disappear. Then, it became clear this was not actually a design choice, but a fault of the coding, since the inventory became so full that dragging along it with a finger was not possible, with the bar rebounding back to the far left side, meaning regular controls were required to actually access anything beyond a certain point. After that, when becoming too full, new items would not even appear on there, including one particular key object that blocked the adventure from being completed. Hopefully this is indeed being looked into because no matter how enjoyable the puzzles may be, nobody wants a game where potential errors in the code lead to an impassable point.