As the second best-selling console of all time (with the PS2 firmly in its sights), the Nintendo Switch obviously has an absolutely gigantic library of amazing games, many of which you’ve likely already poured hours into.
We don’t need to rave any more about the many Mario and Zelda games you can play on Switch, but as the hybrid console nears retirement, we want to highlight some of the best games that you might not have even heard of, let alone played. It turns out there are a lot that belong in that category.
Here are our top three, which should also work on the forthcoming Nintendo Switch 2.
Pepper Grinder
The Switch library is absolutely chock-full of excellent 2D platformers that really test your thumbs. One of our recent(ish) favourites is Pepper Grinder, a short but very sweet playthrough built around the titular Grinder mechanic.
You play as a girl named Pepper, who washes up on a mysterious pirate island and uses a massive drill to speedily burrow in and out of the terrain and bash enemies.
Combat and puzzles are both part of the experience, but the real star here is the challenging precision platforming, which strikes a balance of making you feel just about in control of the Grinder, while never letting you fully relax as you whizz around the game’s colourful levels.
Toem
Toem is a delightful photography puzzle game in which you explore a series of charming hand-drawn dioramas and use your camera to complete quests handed out by the quirky characters you meet along the way.
The black-and-white visuals and relaxed pace give the game a decidedly lo-fi feel, but while the areas you visit are all fairly small, they’re also densely packed with creative photo opps and things to discover.
Progression depends on helping enough people to receive a free bus pass to the next area, so you’re always incentivised to chat to everyone you meet, and while the camera mechanics are pretty simple, snapping pictures in Toem never gets old.
Chants of Sennaar
If you’re the kind of person who opens the Duolingo app on a daily basis, you need to play this ingenious puzzle adventure game.
Chants of Sennaar tasks you with learning a language made up entirely of unfamiliar glyphs and symbols. But rather than reading through passages of text like you would in a Spanish lesson, decoding Chants of Sennaar’s fictional language requires you explore different areas of a mysterious tower, observing where glyphs appear in the environment, logging them in your notebook as you go, and using context clues to slowly piece it all together.
Crucially, the game never makes you feel stupid for taking your time, and while a bit of trial and error tolerance is needed to see it through, few games on Switch are more rewarding.
