Midnight Swamp - Switch Review

Midnight Swamp is a point-and-click adventure from indie developer Wild Omul. With one previous title under their belt (the visual novel Deep Under), the developers have decided to release something a bit more interactive; the art style looks really cool and I understand that it’s all hand-drawn, which is rare to see these days! Pretty neat, let's get stuck in.

The Good

Midnight Swamp is an immersive adventure game where you play as an unnamed protagonist who was woken up on a camping trip gone bad. He then begins to rummage around the surrounding woods, all the while being guided by a slightly creepy-looking anthropomorphic cat. All sounds a bit gnarly, huh? Well, I think that’s why I really enjoyed Midnight Swamp. It balances light-hearted dialogue with some really scary and morose moments, which at times made me jump out of my skin. The art style is cartoony and the character art is clearly influenced by Broken Sword games, but when all put together, it looks fresh and vibrant, despite its distinctly grungy colour palette.

As point-and-click adventures go, Midnight Swamp is heavily centred around individual puzzles, rather than dialogue or relentless pointing and clicking. Despite making it feel a bit slower-paced, I did really enjoy it; the puzzles are perfect brainteasers that are challenging but not ridiculously so. You have to keep an eye on your surroundings because almost every screen has some kind of hint on it, and that hint may relate to solving a puzzle in a completely different area. So come armed with a notepad and/or the trusty screenshot function because, trust me, you’ll need it! Many of the puzzles had a satisfying analogue feel to them that reminded me of the early Resident Evil games, and that’s no bad thing at all!

I also really enjoyed the UI and look-and-feel of Midnight Swamp. I’ve played some point-and-click games which have felt a bit clunky recently as they overthink how to use and combine items. Midnight Swamp, however, struck a good balance between having a useful and interactive heads-up display (meaning you rarely had to open separate menus) and preserving the atmosphere of the game. I also liked how there wasn’t a hint system, as I think that would have tipped things over into ‘too easy' territory.

TL;DR

• Classic but vibrant art style for the genre
• Genius puzzle design
• Easy to use and smooth controls

The Bad

Well, Midnight Swamp is certainly quite short; let's get that out there. Whilst it is priced on the cheap end of the scale, you can quite easily breeze through it all in less than a couple of hours. I wanted more, to be perfectly honest, and it also meant that the story came to a slightly abrupt end as well. And, as is often the case with these kinds of games, there was absolutely zero replay value; some optional collectibles or something similar would have made it feel much more worthwhile.

Linked to the above, the story did tail off significantly in Midnight Swamp. Not just because of its sudden end, but I had a distinct feeling of excitement to see what happened at the start of my adventure, but by the end (a whole hour later) I had completely lost interest… I think that was just because of the puzzle-to-puzzle structure; I found that my interest got invested in those parts more than anything else, and the rest felt like filler.

TL;DR

• Very short experience
• Story plays second fiddle to puzzles and general gameplay

Final Score: 8/10

Those of you who are here for a good time and not for a long time will probably enjoy Midnight Swamp. It does all the basics pretty well and any point-and-click adventure fan would enjoy this; that being said, the length felt more akin to a demo and some more ambitious meta-game would have been welcome. A promising platform for Wild Omul to build upon and I, for one, am excited to see what they do next.

Thank you for checking out our Midnight Swamp Switch review, thank you to Sometimes You (via #Keymailer) for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

• Andrew Caluzzi (Inca Studios / Camped Out)
• Bel Cubitt
• Bobby Jack
• Jack Caven
• Nintendo Maniacs
• RedHero