Review: League of Evil for Switch

The Switch has yet another 2D, retro style game in its repertoire now and that game is none other than League of Evil ($7.99) from Ratalaika Games and Woblyware! This game isn’t just your standard 2D platformer either. It’s full of dangerous traps, guards, and all kinds of evil doing! So is this game a fully loaded delight or is the whole thing a downright booby trapped mess? Find out as we review League of Evil for Nintendo Switch!

As always, I have a masterful breakdown of what the game is about and it’s oh so many features. The description comes straight from the game’s main page too so you can see every twisted detail.

‘Use your acrobatic skills to punch your way through levels filled with deadly traps and defeat your enemies.

The world is counting on you!

In this new version, we bring you new features such as new exclusive levels and a level editor, that will allow players to create and share their own levels! You can even share levels with players all over the world! This works across platforms, increasing the total amount of levels available.

Features:

• 140 challenging levels, divided into 4 chapters.
• Amazing level editor to make your own levels, download new ones from the community and best of all, cross-platform level sharing!
• Classic 8-bit style art style
• Awesome one punch decapitations!
• Rocking chiptune soundtrack.
• Super fast and challenging gameplay
• Each level has a briefcase to collect as a bonus challenge. Try to collect them all!
• Beat the levels as fast as you can to receive the highest score!’

I have a trailer for you as well if you want to ingest a little bit of that evil music, levels, and art that is the League of Evil.

Audio:  

This game’s sound effects are so fun. When you get killed or kill, whether it’s via bullet or a punch to the face, the death sound seems to be the same, a very 8-bit explosion sound. This is just the most satisfying damn sound, even if it is happening to you. Jumping makes sounds as well, this seems strange, but it is tremendously helpful because it helps you understand how many times you’ve jumped since you have a finite amount. It’s like you can hear yourself double jump and know that you have to bounce off another wall again to earn another double jump. I don’t know if I would’ve been as successful at this game without the sound of a jump! Otherwise, a fair amount of the sound effects were usually overtaken by the sound of the chiptune music. And so aside from weapon use, punching, or jumping, I didn’t really notice any sound effects. I mean you have booby traps all over each level that could absolutely make sound, but they chose not to? Or maybe it is there, but again, masked by the sounds of the music. It’s very much hard to tell. Either way, I feel it’s something that could’ve fleshed out this fun kill-fest even more. 7/10

Soundtrack: 

As with all great retro style games, you have to have fantastic chiptunes. Let me tell you right now, League of Evil has chiptunes and they are so very fantastic. For each of the four chapters that the game is split into, there is an overall song playing. The same goes for custom made levels from the community of course. But I found it great because with each song it builds up more and more. Some games just have one chiptune of like 30 seconds in length and it just plays on repeat. Sure it’s hard to discern where it begins and ends, but nevertheless, it’s lazy. What the developers have here is a game where the song starts off with a bass line (for example), that adds some more onto it after a few measures, and then comes in with a melody on top of that. And not only that there are what sounds like places for a chorus line in a lot of the songs. It’s so varied and awesome within each song that I found myself making up words and having an entire song and having a hook too. So, even if you aren’t like me, that’s okay too because this music is still just so fulfilling you kind of don’t want a song to end after you’ve played the 35 levels in a chapter. But conversly, if you move onto the next song, it brings so much joy that you get to hear an entirely new track. But again, the only downside to this all is how short the standard game is and how that only gives you really 4 songs. 9/10

Visuals: 

As you may have gathered from the trailer above and the screen shots, League of Evil has a retro aesthetic. It doesn’t look too much like it ever could have run on a NES/Famicom, but maybe something more powerful like the Super Nintendo/Super Famicom. Anyway, it seems to me that since it has more detail than a standard 8-bit game but it isn’t as heavy as a 16-bit game, by me saying that, you still get a sense for the visuals and what you would expect to see by playing the game. How do I think that this fairs for the game? I think that it is absolutely a necessity. Would I love to see this game in a fully rendered, photo realistic environment, sure. Is that how I want to play this game? Not at all. By making this fast paced game a 2D side scrolling game, it flows so smoothly with no unnecessary stutters and no load times. I think that this blend of flat gaming and this genre of game blend so well. It also makes designing custom levels so much easier as you don’t need to rotate pieces or anything whacky like designing Tony Hawk levels or any other 3D game where you can build custom maps. 9/10

Gameplay: 

The gameplay within the League of Evil is very straight forward. It very much reminds me of Super Meat Boy, which already means success. You are a bionic man who has set out to take down the League of Evil. So essentially in each and every level you jump and punch your way across booby traps and various soldiers, turrets, ninjas and so much more. The levels are short, sweet, but also challenging as hell. Some seem easier than others, but none ever seem too hard to eventually get through. I think that this game more than most has you using problem-solving skills and doing so on the fly. It’s almost more like a racing game as you have a clock set keeping track and a death counter keeping track of how many times it took you before you ever got it right. Crossing the finish line is as simple as punching the mad scientist’s head off at the end of each level. On your way to the mad scientist, you have to keep your eyes peeled for the suitcase in each level. All things factor into what kind of a score you get at the end of each level. You can get one to three stars. So if you’re quick, don’t die (very much), and get the suitcase, you’re looking at a higher grade. Of course, you can replay a level over and over again until you get the coveted 3 stars, but that part is up to you. Aside from the personal satisfaction, I couldn’t see a reason to do it, but maybe you get something special if you do it. Unfortunately, that was not anything I could uncover as I just simply couldn’t get 3 stars on every single level. All in all, the gameplay is so fast paced and hilariously fun that I would call you a certified dumb-dumb if you did not buy this game. Straight up! As with all great retro style games, you have to have fantastic chiptunes. Let me tell you right now, League of Evil has chiptunes and they are so very fantastic. For each of the four chapters that the game is split into, there is an overall song playing. The same goes for custom made levels from the community of course. But I found it great because with each song it builds up more and more. Some games just have one chiptune of like 30 seconds in length and it just plays on repeat. Sure it’s hard to discern where it begins and ends, but nevertheless, it’s lazy. What the developers have here is a game where the song starts off with a bass line (for example), that adds some more onto it after a few measures, and then comes in with a melody on top of that. And not only that there are what sounds like places for a chorus line in a lot of the songs. It’s so varied and awesome within each song that I found myself making up words and having an entire song and having a hook too. 9/10

Replay-ability: 

League of Evil, as mentioned way at the top in the features, has custom missions that you can build yourself. This lends itself to the game having lots of replay-ability. So not only can you come back to this game time and again to design infinite amounts of levels, but you can also download levels. This means that as long as people keep uploading custom levels (from any platform that they play on) you have a game that essentially lasts forever. This is very much like how Super Mario Maker works and makes the game infinitely longer. I love when games add custom level building and sharing. This game has wowed me in every way and the replayability aspect included within this game is simply no different. And if you consider how inexpensive this game is, you have yourself a cocktail of awesome. 10/10

If you’re into 2D fast past games, I have the game download right here for you.

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