Feeble Light looks and feels like an 8-bit shoot ‘em up, but it plays a bit differently, as you’ll learn from our Feeble Light Switch review.
While the visual style, audio and game design of Feeble Light do indeed recall the 8-bit era, the tight controls and sheer number of sprites on screen at one time provide an altogether more modern experience.
Put simply: Feeble Light is an 8-bit shmup that simply wouldn’t have been possible in the 8-bit era. For example, the game has moments of bullet hell craziness that are more akin to shmups from more recent times, as they simply wouldn’t have been possible on 8-bit machines, and nor would some of the game’s larger enemies.
The game itself is a vertically-scrolling shoot ‘em up, in which you have yer standard bullets and bombs at your disposal to defeat the rather cute and charmingly-designed but deadly enemies, but that’s not all you have to contend with, as you must also carefully guide your ship through the treacherous cavernous playing field, making Feeble Light that bit more challenging.
So, as well as the graphical style, the difficulty level is also straight out of the 8-bit era, which means that Feeble Light isn’t a game for the feeble. It is hard.
One minor irritation is the game’s assertion that you need to “git gud” upon dying, but that’s probably just my personal dislike of the phrase, as I’m an old man who distrusts any slang that was coined after about 1999.
More positively, the cute character design of the enemies recalls 80s arcade games, and while the colour palette is limited by design, the unlockable colour schemes keep things interesting. The bleepy soundtrack is also perfect for the game and extremely evocative of the -bit era. It’s far from feeble, and the music speeding up when you’re in danger adds a nice bit of tension to the gameplay.
If you fancy an old-school, tough-as-nails vertically-scrolling shmup, then head on over to the eshop and shine this Feeble Light onto your Nintendo Switch. Dare you accept the challenge to bring light back to the darkened cosmos with your ace shooting skills?
