Flip Wars is a relatively new eShop title for Switch that puts you in the boots of a character donning one of four colors and your goal is to flip tiles on a board to match your color. A few modes of play are included, and this is clearly meant to be played in local or online multiplayer, but Flip Wars is so flat that it’s hard to recommend.
To be blunt, there’s not a lot to Flip Wars. Four nameless, faceless, voiceless humanoid characters — Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue — go to battle on rectangular boards with lots of little squares on them. When you jump and land on one of these tiles, or panels, two panels in each of the four cardinal directions change color. The goal is to typically just get as many of your color set compared to your opponents. This particular mode is called Panel Battle. You also have Knock Out Battle, whereby if an opponent is in the path of your changing panels, they get flown out of the board for a few seconds, and then there is also Life Battle Mode, which is like Knockout, except with a limited number of lives.
Mechanics are easy to understand and grasp; Hip Drops is the proper name for jumping up and landing down on a panel, it’s how you change the color of them. Panels of your own color allow you to move quicker, while opponent panels slow you down. Items or power-ups are included, such as the Panel Power Up that extends your reach of panels that get flipped when you Hip Drop, X power-ups allow you to direct your impact in a diagonal direction, and Speed Up allows you to move faster. An Invincible power-up is out there too, very helpful in Knockout games. You can also slide by moving the left stick while jumping, and cancel a jump while in air too. Tacticians may use these to get a step above novice players, but that’s really about as in depth as it gets.
I have played a few local battles, but have not put much time or had much luck finding any games online. There is also a My Room area where you can review your stats for the game as far as number of times having played each mode, number of panels flipped (gets into the thousands fairly quickly), and how often you have visited the three arenas. Flip Wars is very basic title no matter how you slice it. From the ho-hum presentation to the lack of any real depth in any of the modes, this is a borderline textbook casual mobile game. It doesn’t do much for me, but if you’re into this kind of game, you could spend $10 in less enjoyable ways.
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