New Super Lucky’s Tale (2019) [Switch]

We shouldn’t be afraid to embrace whimsy, that nagging idea that life could be magical; it could be special if we were only willing to take a few risks.

-Donald Miller

Close your eyes and transport your mind to a simpler age of gaming. Sitting between the late ’90s to early 2000s was an epoch where 3D mascot platformers were prevalent and brought endless joy to gamers. Now, when you open your eyes everything around you will feel familiar, yet new.

You’re now in the cheerful world of New Super Lucky’s Tale, developed and published by the team at Playful Studios.

Why is the word ‘new’ in the title, you ask? That’s a great question! This game, according to Playful Studios, is a reimagining of Super Lucky’s Tale that originally released for Xbox One and PC in 2017. It contains the same core game with redesigned levels, controls, features and graphical upgrades. They also added new environments, puzzles, minigames, even improved the main character’s move set.

Take the role of Lucky as you travel to different worlds using the power of the Book of Ages to find the missing pages before the evil family, appropriately called the Kitty Litter, gets their paws on them. Explore a beautiful hub world and tackle any level you’d like in any order until you find enough pages to challenge the boss and move on to the next world. The main levels will each contain four pages to find by completing four main objectives: collect 300 coins, find the five L-U-C-K-Y letters, find the hidden page, and finally complete the level.

There are also shorter mini-levels scattered throughout the worlds that usually involve solving a single puzzle or completing a specific challenge that will earn you a page. All the levels are surprisingly varied in their design, aesthetic, objectives, and even perspective.

You’ll often come across 2D levels that I found to be very enjoyable and a great change of pace to the 3D platforming. The 2D levels themselves are also wonderfully varied, there are even a few auto-runner levels! This is what impressed me the most about the game; the levels don’t stick strictly to the theme of the hub world and the objectives are varied enough to where it rarely feels like you’re doing the same thing twice.

To be transparent, I rushed through the story so that I was able to complete the game in time for this review. My typical way of playing is I usually keep exploring the world until everything is collected. But this time, as soon as I had enough pages to move on to the next world, I did just that. I left a couple of levels in each world unexplored and I can’t wait to go back and see all the things I missed. Playing it this way felt like a really short experience but I know very well I could have doubled my time with it if I played at my usual pace.

Tales from the Farmlands

New Super Lucky’s Tale keeps collectibles surprisingly restrained, only asking players to collect pages and coins. The coins themselves are completely optional as it only serves as currency to unlock costumes. This is a refreshing alternative to the collect-a-thon mentality that is seen in several other games in this genre, such as the recently released A Hat in Time.

The game is everything you’ve come to expect (in a good way) from a 3D mascot offering: a cast of colorful characters, vibrant worlds full of life, and platforming challenges that are as fun to play as they are to look at.

Now, before I get into the meat of the review, allow me to just make a few nitpicks that I felt were overlooked.

The first is the lack of a first-person view. When you first enter any of the beautiful worlds of the game, you want to look around, which of course you can do by moving the camera, but doing so in first-person would have been swell.

The second is how there are no idle animations when Lucky is left alone, besides the standard tail waving. Personally, I believe idle animations have been iconic in platformers of the past such as Mario falling asleep or Banjo pulling out a Gameboy to play while waiting on the player. These aren’t a huge deal but they feel like missed opportunities.

Visuals: 9/10

You will not find any dull surroundings here.

All the environments are bright, splashy and bursting with life. This game looks absolutely beautiful on the Nintendo Switch. Everything you come across in the many different settings is simplistic yet detailed. The grass will sway back and forth, birds and other critters will run past you, and many objects will move and interact with your character as you swipe your tail.

All the screenshots you see in this article are only from the first two worlds so you can see just how varied the environments are. Whether you’re exploring an underground cave, visiting farmlands, or exploring some ancient ruin, they all pop out of the screen with personality.

Now let’s talk about the cast of cute, happy citizens found in every world. All the characters were seemingly designed to be cute, adorable, comical, or a mixture of all of the above. Even with the ‘evil’ characters, you can’t help but wish there was a plush doll made of them that you could cuddle. All the characters are very well designed and animated even though most of them just seem to display a single expression all the time: happy.

The developers have done a great job pushing the Switch to make this game’s graphics on par with that of a big studio.

Audio: 8/10

To compliment the happy visuals, the game also offers a great upbeat soundtrack, featuring a variety of digitized instruments (and I believe a few orchestrated scores) that fit the theme of each environment. This means that you’ll also notice a good amount of variety in the styles and instrumentation of tunes you’ll hear as well.

While there weren’t too many tracks that stood out to me personally (maybe I just need to spend more time with it), I still found the music enjoyable and fitting.

Likewise, the sound effects are as lively as you’d expect them to be.

Characters talk through dialogue boxes while uttering their signature gibberish. The babble itself is very cute and adds to the charm of the adventure.

There are also a few cut-scenes that feature full voice acting. While these scenes are well done, I felt like it almost surprised me to hear actual voices since they’re used so sparingly.

Gameplay: 9/10

As far as 3D platformers are concerned, New Super Lucky’s Tale is one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played in terms of pure fun. The character’s move set starts simple and remains so throughout the entire adventure. You have a double jump, tail swipe, and burrow abilities, but you never feel limited in what you can do. As you progress the levels get more challenging and you’ll learn new ways to combine your moves to overcome fast-paced hurdles. Enemies can be defeated by either swiping your tail, bouncing on their heads, or even springing up from below.

Finding hard-to-reach places will reward you with coins.

The levels are all lovingly crafted to offer a healthy dose of exploration without feeling too vast or overly crowded. Some are fairly straightforward while others allow you to head off in any direction you’d like.

Playful studios have polished this game to an incredible level of quality.

I very rarely ran into a framerate hitch and only encountered a single glitch that sent me through the stage. For the most part, the entire game ran smoothly. Playing the game on portable mode is just as smooth and gorgeous. The only drawback is that some of the load times can be quite lengthy. If you lose a life there is also a short loading screen that puts you back to a checkpoint or the beginning of the stage. It wasn’t so bad that it dampened my experience but enough to make note of it.

The boss battles are an absolute blast to play. There are the typical phases of dodging attacks and waiting for an opening to fight back. But in-between the phases are also moments of bullet-hell madness which, as a shoot-em-up fan, are a big delight.

Narrative: 7/10

The plot of New Super Lucky’s Tale is fairly straightforward. You are separated from your family and are transported to worlds that are invaded by the Kitty Litter and it’s up to you alone to bring them to justice.

The story itself may not be deep but there is a surprising amount of dialogue from the characters. NPC’s will all have plenty to say and even the bad guys themselves are very talkative.

As a father of three little ones, I’m all about dad jokes and puns. So I appreciate how the dialogue contains a plethora of puns constantly being thrown at you. In fact, the puns are so prevalent that I was almost surprised whenever I read a sentence that didn’t contain one. Thanks to the vibrant characters, the world is filled with colorful personality.

Challenge: 7/10

The game is easy enough so that kids can play it, and believe me, my kids have expressed an immense interest in trying it out for themselves (Sorry kids, but daddy has to review it first!).

The game appropriately accommodates players of all ages. But let’s face it, I see quite a lot of adults who grew up with Super Mario 64 interested in playing this game. The good news is that the developers fully understand that there will be plenty of adults playing it.

The levels get more challenging as you progress but I still found myself gaining lives much more frequently than losing them. For me, finishing the level and getting the 300-coin page are easy tasks to accomplish in every level. What becomes increasingly more difficult is finding the hidden page and the letters. There is also a post-credit world with harder challenges to enjoy which is much appreciated.

Rolling around this tilting stage feels very familiar… *cough* *Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD* *cough*

Uniqueness: 6/10

The aesthetic of this game perfectly fits the type of game this is: a joyous adventure meant to be fun and enjoyable to all the senses. Many other games in the genre pursue the happy, colorful, and vibrant themes that are found here. In this game’s case, I don’t completely hold this against it, as being unique isn’t particularly an essential element. New Super Lucky’s Tale isn’t out to reinvent the 3D platformer formula but instead strives to perfect it, and that’s okay with me.

Replayability: 8/10

While this may not be an incredibly lengthy experience, there are secrets to find and post-story levels to play afterward.

There are also plenty of costumes that I have yet to figure out how to unlock and potentially even more secrets to find. Some levels may require a second play through to find pages you may have missed. But other than that, there aren’t really any reasons to revisit 100% completed levels.

However, this has been such an enjoyable experience that I see myself wanting to replay this adventure sometime in the future.

Personal: 10/10

Personally, this game hit all the right notes as a big 3D platformer fan. I’m very glad to see this recent trend of indie studios pick up on the lack of mascot adventures and see them pour so much love into it. I found myself filled with delight every time I would bounce on an enemy, solve a puzzle, and find a hidden secret. Because of this, I have no doubt that New Super Lucky’s Tale will be cemented as one of the greats of the genre in this modern era.

We’d like to thank Playful Studios for offering us a copy of their game for this honest New Super Lucky’s Tale review!

Aggregated Score: 8.0

Kalas, aspiring content creator (but failing horribly at it) has found a wonderful community of friends to share his love of games through Twitch, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube.