Gurgamoth Review (Nintendo Switch)

The Nintendo Switch is a powerhouse when it comes to high-quality party games. Galvanic Games’ recent release, Gurgamoth, attempts to make a name for itself and join some elite company. Unfortunately, this game falls flat in almost every respect and doesn’t do much to keep players invested for more than just a quick play session. With that being said, it does have the potential to be an enjoyable title but it doesn’t know how to find its rhythm.

Lacking Gameplay

Gurgamoth‘s premise is one that is fairly interesting. The concept of the game is centered around sacrificing other players to summon an elder god. In order to do this, players fight to the death which leads to the Gurgamoth being activated. Here’s the catch though, there are no weapons so the stage is used as one. Hitting opponents into spiked traps and lasers are the only ways of survival. Powerups can be earned that can throw a curveball into things, like freezing an enemy or slowing downtime. Although this seems fun on paper, it’s incredibly dull in practice. The gameplay is the same thing over and over while also being confusing to get the hang of.

It’s a game that is overly simplified and is hurt because of it. Only three moves can be executed, Attack, Dodge, and Stun. Even with these though, you’ll only be spamming the attack button. There isn’t really a reason to try and get complicated with what moves are being used because nobody else is doing this. It boils down to just being like bumper cars, where you hit each other until someone falls off the side. In this case, you aren’t falling off the side, just being eliminated by the sharp edges of the map. This just isn’t complex or deep enough to want to explore the game’s style and what it wants players to accomplish since there’s no reward to do so.

Not Enough Content

From the start, the first thing that’s noticed is its lack of content. Only a handful of characters can be selected and a couple of maps are available. Besides that? Nothing else. No unlockables. No rewards. Not even a way to level up. There just isn’t enough worth coming back to after the initial sitting. With this game being priced at $9.99, it still doesn’t seem worth its price even at a low one. Characters all play the exact same with no difference except a color, maps can have varying changed but it’s really not much, and it just feels barren. There’s a good foundation for this title but it still needs some work.

Gurgamoth does run well though. The graphics are nice, its artwork looks cool, and the music is decent enough. It plays fine in both handheld in docked mode while having no lag or glitches. Even with this, the game feels very much like it’s still in progress or at least in Early Access. There is gameplay yet it feels pointless overall. When a match ends, the epic Gurgamoth is summoned, but all I wondered was “Okay, now what?” It doesn’t show you what this ancient god can do or even looks like, so why are we even doing this? At least there’s some salvation with its ability to play with friends. Right?

Bland with Friends

I guess, right. If you don’t have friends to play with, you’ll definitely stop sooner rather than later. In solo, the game is, to put it nicely, average. AI in the game knows how the game should operate and the best ways to win, except you have no real clue what strategies to use if there are any. You can scale the difficulty of the AI but even then it’s not enough to really make an impact on the fun. For the first few games, I had no idea how to win and couldn’t win a simple round. The AI ran circles around me and of course that hurt me from wanting to continue, yet I pushed through. Eventually, I got the hang of things and could win a match, but then I realized when is being good at this title going to come in handy?

That’s right, it came in clutch when I played against a few friends. Each match I was crushing the competition swiftly and easily, however, that just made everyone want to stop since the game was lacking in the first place. The last thing this game needed was a learning curve. I could barely convince the group to continue playing after a few rounds. The match wasn’t even complete and they had wanted to stop. It was a struggle for them to learn the mechanics and want to try new maps. This was due to the maps being uninteresting, the characters being uninspiring, and the gameplay being unenjoyable. Even with friends, there wasn’t much going for it.

Galvanic Games did put effort into this indie title and you can see it in its concept and artwork. On paper, this game sounds like it could be loads of fun but it falls very short in practice. With so many other great party games on the system, Gurgamoth is better left in the dust. Should this game receive more content later down the line or a sequel with plenty more variety packed in, then those may be worth checking out. For now, though, it’s tough to argue in defense of this game.

Thank you to Galvanic Games for providing us with a review code!