Horace review for Nintendo Switch: A futuristic tale stuck in the past

Graphics

The look of the game is gorgeous. Some of the pixel art is masterfully done and you can get a lot of the personality from a character just be seeing them for the first time.

Out and about the game, while pixelated, also seems somehow painted, which brought me back to my first playthrough of Braid which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Each character is capable of showing every possible emotion and it’s conveyed incredibly well. Especially if you mess up and get a special animation on how your mistake destroyed you…you feel it.

My one qualm is that, for some bizarre reason, in many of the cutscenes they go with extreme closeups, almost forgetting that the characters are pixelated. At that point, it looks like my kids are waving a Duplo creation in front of my face. It gets very ugly and sort of reminds me of a lot of the animations you’d see on places like Newgrounds or AlbinoBlacksheep years ago.

But for the most part, the game was very pretty to look at, especially when the game would take a darker turn, the artist’s attention to detail absolutely shined…much to Horace’s dismay as the game will get dark and violent at a moment’s notice and then come right back to being cute again.