Also on: PC
Publisher: Draknek
Developer: Draknek & Friends
Medium: Digital
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: E
To answer the obvious: no, this isn?t some weird adaptation of A Good Man is Hard to Find. Condolences to the Flannery O?Connor fans who were desperately hoping the writer was finally seeing her works adapted to video games.
For everyone else who?s not a fan of 1950s Southern Gothic fiction (which I imagine is most people), A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build is a cute sokoban puzzle game making its way to the Switch about a half-decade after it first arrived to widespread acclaim on mobile devices.
Unsurprisingly, it comes with the usual Nintendo markup. Thankfully, we?re not talking about a tenfold increase in price, but you still have to pay double to play A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build on the Switch compared to what you?d have to pay on your iPhone.
That said, this may be the rare case where paying a so-called Nintendo tax is kind of worth it. The game asks you ? or the adorable little black monster you?re controlling ? to roll around snowballs, building (as the title implies) snowmen. While I have no doubt that the game is incredibly easy to control using touch controls, in this case it feels like having buttons and a D-pad make it even better. After all, pushing a snowball just a hair too far ruins it, and you can be a lot more precise with physical controls than you can with your finger.
Mind you, A Good Snowman is Hard to Build is nothing if not forgiving, so it?s not like precision is a must. If you screw up, the game allows you to rewind as many moves as you want, giving you ample opportunity to see where you went wrong and fix things.
Really, I shouldn?t be shocked that A Good Snowman is Hard to Build is so cute or so good at what it does. After all, it?s a loose sequel to A Monster?s Expedition ? which also came to the Switch after being a mobile hit, and which was also utterly delightful. You don?t need to play one in order to understand the other, but if you want some adorable-but-challenging puzzle games, you should probably play this one. Or that one. Or, better yet, both.
Draknek provided us with an A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build Switch code for review purposes.