Developed by: Westone Bit Entertainment
Published by: ININ Games
Released: December 14, 2021 (North America)
Arcade side scroller games are my comfort food of video games. Growing up in the 90’s I was exposed to this genre very early on in my life. The very first game that I ever played was Super Mario World. When I saw the game Clockwork Aquario and received the code to review it, I was excited to jump into this world, unfortunately, that excitement didn’t last too long. Clockwork Aquario is the newest arcade platformer to come to the Nintendo Switch and unfortunately, I cannot recommend this game.
Long Wait for a Short Game
My biggest gripe with this game is the amount of game you get when you boot up Clockwork Aquario. When I was getting ready to review this game, I set aside a whole afternoon to review this game. Well, it took me less than an hour to play everything this game has to offer. Clockwork Aquario has 5 very generic stages. Yes, you read that right, only 5 stages. I get it, arcade games don’t tend to be long, but this feels way too short. Especially for a game that’s going to be $20 on release date. These stages are pretty simple, so you can easily speed run this game in about 45 minutes or so depending on the difficulty. I was able to get through all 5 stages in easy difficulty in just under 30 minutes and I am not an expert platformer.
Unfortunately, the lack of content is not the only thing that is keeping me from enjoying this game. In Clockwork Aquario you choose between three characters, Huck Londo, Elle Moon, and Gush the robot. All these three characters play exactly the same. I played through the stages with all of these characters and my experience was exactly the same regardless of the character. Having the characters play differently would have made this game a lot more enjoyable.
To make matters worst I felt like gameplay was very stiff and quite honestly not that enjoyable. The boss fights were kinda cool, and it was fun the first time I played them, but that wore off pretty quickly. If Clockwork Aquario had solid gameplay maybe I would have gone back to play these stages again to try to beat my previous scores, but I can’t see myself doing that.
The one area where the game truly shines is in its aesthetic. Playing this game did feel like I was brought back in time to the ’90s. The art style and music are very 90’s and if you are looking for a game that feels right out of a time capsule then Clockwork Aquario has that in spades.
Clockwork Aquario Short, but not Sweet
As I mentioned before, I cannot recommend Clockwork Aquario. If this game had more content then I could maybe justify this game. If you are really looking for an action platformer the Nintendo Switch has so many more to offer at the moment. Now, if you have been patiently waiting for this game, I would say wait for it to go on sale before you purchase it. I cannot justify a $20 game purchase that’s only going to give you about an hour of gameplay.