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Death Squared is everything you could ever want from a Nintendo Switch party game and more. Thanks to the console's ability to divide your Joy-Con up into two controllers, it automatically opens up the doors to turn a standard single player experience into an awesome game to play with friends and family.
Death Squared's core mechanics are simple. You have four coloured blocks which you need to control around an area and move them to their specific targeted goals. Red, blue, yellow, and green, and each player, or players control one or more depending on the number of people playing the game. I played with my brother and we both controlled two blocks which were easily switched between by holding down the ZL button on the Joy-Con.
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Death Squared sees you go through a collection of levels as you try and get your block to the coloured square on the floor that resembles your colour. The thing here is that each block needs to get to one point and in every new level, you face new challenges and obstacles in your path to put your puzzle solving to the test.
Sometimes the solution was right in front of my eyes as I tried very hard to get my red block across the level while electricity shot out of my head towards a pole and caused any other block but my own colour to explode if they walked into it. Now we had to find our way around this by moving strategically across the stage.
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In a way, Death Square gave me that same feeling I got while playing through Overcooked. Everyone screaming at each other to do this and go there, and the excitement filled the room instantly, as when we failed a mission it was never that person's fault at all. It is the sheer amount of challenges and death traps that make the game so fantastic. Lazers, invisible block, spikes that randomly come out of the floor when a certain player stands on their box, and other things that will truly test your friendship.
There is one issue though, once you have played the game with friends and family, it is hard to play alone. Still, the puzzles do differ in single player, so it is an added set of activities to complete which add value to the overall game. Death Squared is also teeming with personality, as the narrator's banter and dry jokes add another level of enjoyment to the experience. Sure it gets cheesy, but I could not help but chuckle every time I died and the narrator had something smart to say about it.
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While Death Squared is great to play with family and friends, it is not that sort of game that you spend hours upon hours playing. Rather, it is a game you play in short bursts due to the repetition of its puzzles. This is in no way is a bad thing, given that I reviewed this on the Switch and that is the primary purpose of the hardware.
It also goes without saying that the game runs like a dream on the Switch. Both portable mode and docked mode was a breeze, and the ability to switch the Joy-Con into two controllers eliminates that need to purchase more hardware. If you want to play with four players, then that is a different story.
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Death Squared offers hours of great party puzzle gaming and is a decent solo experience when you need to test just how smart you actually are. It works perfectly on the Switch and feels like it has been made for both the hardware. It is a match made in heaven.
Available On: Nintendo Switch | Reviewed
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