SpellKeeper review for Nintendo Switch, PC

SpellKeeper describes itself as a logic game, rather than a puzzle game. As far as I can tell, this is a semantic difference rather than an actual one. I mean, you?re arranging lights around a board to free butterflies. If that?s not a puzzle game — in which, admittedly, you use logic to figure things out — I don?t know what is.

However you want to label it, however, SpellKeeper is painfully dull. It talks up its ?gorgeous? hand-drawn graphics and its dozens of challenging puzzles, but neither of these descriptors are accurate. The graphics are certainly hand-drawn, but they?re kind of ugly, and make the game look more amateurish than anything else. A forgettable storyline and middling voice acting don?t add much to the aesthetics, either.

As for the puzzles themselves…they?re fine. The game makes things harder than they need to be by dumping everything it has to offer right off the bat. This means that the early levels are surprisingly difficult, but also that, once you get the hang of them, SpellKeeper has little else to offer.

I?ve almost certainly played worse games than SpellKeeper. But that?s hardly an endorsement of what it has on offer. If you just want an inexpensive, forgettable puzzle (sorry, ?logic?) game it?ll do the trick, but you could definitely find much better things to play.

Silesia Games provided us with a SpellKeeper Switch code for review purposes.