There are many games with great puzzles on the Switch but not quite so many with the great art direction and animation style of She remembered caterpillars. You’re unlikely to know the developer (Jumpsuit entertainment) or even the publishers (Ysbryd Games & WhisperGames) and it’s unfortunate that after reading this review you probably won’t even remember them. Because She Remembered Caterpillars is a great little puzzle gem on switch that (if you’re looking to scratch your head) you should pluck out of the mountain of shovelware that seems to be flooding the Eshop these days.
It starts off simple enough. You control these little cubes with legs of different colors with the goal of getting them to home via platforms that will cause them to sprout propellers and lift them into the sky. It’s straightforward enough at first, which is good because you’ll likely be more focused on the watercolor-style backdrops for the first few levels until the game gets challenging. Yet even after the difficulty of the puzzles increases (and it does) the impact of the art style and ambient soothing soundtrack can’t be overstated. Though the puzzles may become challenging, the scene they are set against keeps attention calm and focused.
After a few levels, new mechanics will start to be layered on top in a typical puzzle game challenge. Some examples of this are different colored cubes; with their introduction comes barriers which prohibit cubs from moving unless they are the matching color. In later levels, players can begin combining cubes at will allowing them to experiment with mixing color combinations. This can be helpful when trying to get a red and a blue cube past a barrier that only a blue (or purple) cube can pass through.
Later in the game still the challenge increases even further. I never found it to be frustratingly hard, but there were times where I’d set the controller aside for a moment to give myself space form the brain teaser, or bounce off of it for a couple of days until it popped into my head that I needed to finish that puzzle. I never found it to be as hard a Portal (my favorite puzzle series) or as easy as something like SnipperClips (where the puzzles are more cooperative and less brain-busting) but typically I felt there was a good mix of progress and stagnation due to the challenge.
There are a couple of gripes I have with the game though, mainly the controls. The cubes exist on a grid which means they sort of stiffly move in one of 8 directions. It’s easy at first, but in later levels, it was annoying to press the joystick right only for the little bugger to hop to up and to the right. Additionally to switch between all the cubes on the board you use the shoulder triggers. It’s easy enough at first with just a few cubes on the screen, but after several levels, there is a variable hoard of them and tapping the shoulder button 5 times to cycle through them many times over gets a bit annoying. It creates this kind of cadence where you see the cube you’d like to move, you tap on the shoulder button until it’s selected, then you hold the joystick in the direction you’d like them to go and eventually they get there. It’s not a reason to abstain from playing She Remembered Caterpillars, but it does break the immersion and always feels overly complex for what’s a mechanically simple game.
My other gripe is that She Remembered Caterpillars often introduces new gameplay mechanics without a great introduction to them. For example: when you first learn you can combine cubes to create a new color cube it’s unclear if you can do that with any and every cube, and if they’ll be able to split again. Questions answered through trial and error to be fair, but since these mechanics are introduced in a structured tutorial setting it’d be nice if they gave the player a bit more information.
Overall She Remembered Caterpillars isn’t an amazing game but it is one of the better new Indie games on the Eshop, and that’s among few puzzlers. If you watch the trailer, or a short lets play and decide you like the way it looks and the puzzles seem fun give it a go. It won’t be up for any GOTY awards by any stretch but it’s more than equipped to occupy your time on a flight or an evening on the couch.