Ratcheteer DX Review

Despite being something of an oxymoron, modern games that lean on nostalgia have a genuine appeal. Anyone who has been gaming long enough to see a couple of systems come and go will have fond memories of the comparatively simpler experiences that got them hooked on games in the first place. At the same time, developers are trying to create something new with every release, inevitably leading to innovations and improvements that stack up into significant progress over the scale of years. This puts games that lean into that old-school appeal in a powerful position – with improved hardware and hindsight, the aim is often to channel the charms of yesterday while avoiding the snags that modern gaming has more or less decided better belong in the past.

Ratcheteer was originally released in 2022 for Playdate, a modern but retro-inspired handheld gaming console with a unique button-and-crank interface and a black-and-white display, and Ratcheteer DX brings the experience in full colour to PC and Nintendo Switch. The game’s old-school identity is on full display from the start, with blocky, low-res pixel graphics and cheery chiptune evoking Gameboy-era Zelda titles from which the game takes clear inspiration. You play as an apprentice mechanic in an underground colony where humanity is sheltering from a harsh and unnatural winter, and while you start with nothing but a crank lantern to light your way through the tunnels, you slowly build up your arsenal of tools. It’s textbook adventure Metroidvania, with large areas of the map that need to be slowly unlocked through your new abilities, and there’s no shortage of backtracking as you explore the world and its series of puzzle-filled dungeons.

We are here to backtrack!

The scaffolding here is solid and recognisable, but the story is fairly barebones, functioning mostly as a way to get you moving from one biome to the next as each new goal comes up. You don’t spend much time with any of the game’s characters, making it difficult to become invested in anyone’s plight, and the lack of depth leads to a sense that the story has been slapped on to justify the gameplay rather than being an integral component of the experience with something to say. This detachment is exacerbated by the fact that most of the game’s events happen in your absence; the worldbuilding is largely delivered by reading scraps of information in books or from people telling you about things that have already happened, making you a strangely passive observer in a story that’s nevertheless trying to position you as the hero.

Plenty of other elements in Ratcheteer DX also chafe from the start, not least the highly pixellated graphics. The original Playdate boasted a 2.7-inch screen, and porting this to even the handheld Switch involves a significant magnification which, with the low-res art style and high contrast, is very tough on the eyes. I usually stay away from graphics filters when they’re an option, but here the grid overlay adds slightly higher pixel granularity and is essential to reducing (if still not entirely mitigating) the eye strain you’re otherwise bound to experience.

The world gets brighter as you progress, but much of the game is played in darkness

Leaning into the black-and-white restrictions of the original display, Ratcheteer DX plays with light and darkness in some interesting ways, with large portions of the game experienced in almost near-darkness except for what is immediately lit up in front of you. While there are moments where this is used well, it ultimately lends a little too much realism to the experience of traipsing around unfamiliar, hazardous tunnels in the darkness; the game’s many winding paths often need to be followed to the end before you realise there is a dead end in your way, and the backtracking becomes a lot less about meaningful discovery than stumbling blindly around until you happen upon the way through. It’s slow-going, too, as the rubble which impedes your path respawns whenever you enter a new map screen, and must be continually re-destroyed. You do have a map to guide you, although its utility is limited by it showing only the overall alignment of map screens and major interest points rather than information about what your paths look like to help plan your way.

Although the drudgery of exploration lessens as you build up your abilities and establish shortcuts to move through the world more easily, this improvement is only ever relative. Combat, likewise, is fairly forgettable, with both low-level enemies and boss fights being quite easy once you’ve learnt their vulnerabilities, although there are moments of creativity with how some of your abilities can be used to solve problems, such as the stomp coming off the glider to help shake off pesky bugs. While some of the skills you gain such as the jump are pretty standard fare, there’s a real commitment to making everything consistent within the mining and mechanical theme, and these moments of originality help to shift the experience a little closer to fun.

It never quite gets there, though, as Ratcheteer DX is weighed down by a myriad of issues around its mechanics. It’s not that the game doesn’t teach you its rules, it just does so badly, with key functions of your tools left unexplained and the levels often missing the kind of contextual opportunities to learn that could replace more explicit instructions. Moreover, certain mechanics are so lacking in salience that you can trigger them repeatedly without realising what it is you are doing. In one case, I almost cleared an entire dungeon without learning what one of its central mechanics was, all because of how the design failed to call attention to some of the changes in the environment that come from using your abilities.

Jelly on a plate

Although there are hints in the world to help you work out some of the less obvious mechanics, these are typically encountered outside of the dungeons, long before you’ve come across the relevant puzzles or even acquired the tools needed for that particular skill. There’s a lot of puzzling, winding exploration, and combat between when you learn such information and when it becomes relevant for your gameplay, and this kind of context-free exposition makes it extraordinarily easy to lose the particulars, especially when the clues are mixed in with very similar worldbuilding snippets that exist to add flavour without needing to be remembered exactly.

Final Thoughts

Much like the gameplay itself, where there’s often only a tiny splash of light from your lantern to illuminate the seemingly infinite darkness, Ratcheteer DX is brief flashes of interest within a bog of backtracking and dead ends. Much of the overall design, such as the information delivery and the narrative, feel dated in a way that modern games have largely left behind, and the small flickers of inspiration that do exist simply aren’t enough to let the game stand strong against the rest of what gaming has to offer today.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2 // Review code supplied by publisher

Click here for more information on WellPlayed’s review policy and ethics