Despite its simplicity and minuteness, Lovish is an 8-bit retro platformer that gets right to the point with its retro charm. Some of its progression feels archaic, but it makes up for it with tongue-in-cheek satire and tight platforming. It’s a delight of an indie gem that’s best appreciated by 90s kids who are still wearing their rose-colored glasses.
Picture this: It’s the mid-90s. You’re sitting on a beige rug in front of your massive CRT television. You’re playing a game on your Super Nintendo or SEGA Genesis. It’s a platformer where your main character is unusually fragile. Levels are simple, often constrained to a single screen. Perhaps two. The game tests your patience, precision, and in some cases problem-solving. Looking back, it’s safe to admit that older games are harder because they aren’t what we now consider as “player-friendly.”
Gaming back then was a simpler time. A harder time. Let’s take the rose-colored glasses off.
Nathan (head honcho and Elgato aficionado) and I (silly goose, coffee drinker) have spent the past few days playing Lovish on the Nintendo Switch 2. We have been enjoying this bite-sized gem from developer LABS WORKS (the mind behind Astalon!) and have quite a bit to say about it. Do note that this review is separate opinions of the game.
Lovish is a very simple platformer, albeit one that masks its depth behind single screen levels. It leans into the simplicity of retro platformers while retaining their harsh difficulties. It’s a nostalgia bomb of retro gaming that brings us, children of the 90s and older, immense joy. It does all of this without the graphical crunchiness of 8-bit pixel art, which is a feat in and of itself.
We think Lovish is a fun, short game that has more positives than negatives to it. Its simplicity makes this game easily accessible to anyone with a Switch. It’s a pick-up and go sort of deal without having to learn complicated mechanics. It puts players in a room, asks them to unlock a door while traversing a series of enemies, jumping puzzles, or both.
Simplicity is the major theme of Lovish, from its platforming all the way down to its level design. Sir Solomon, the blue knight that serves as Lovish’s protagonist, is a fragile being. Taking one instance of damage from colliding with an enemy or landing on spikes is fatal, requiring us to start the level over, deducting one point of health from our health bank of over 100 points. Luckily, levels are small and didn’t require excessive backtracking. Again, levels are a single screen, so there’s only so much that can be done in any one level knowing the constraints of the game’s design!
Getting to the door at the other end of the screen completed the level. It’s a simple process of getting from point A to point B while avoiding hazards and slaying enemies (if we chose). There are very few mechanics to learn here – just attacking with a sword, jumping, and then dashing (which is unlocked later). Each world of levels introduced a new platforming mechanic, as well.
What we were expecting from this game was more than just that; we thought it might have some role-playing game elements in its design, but we are delighted to report that what has been delivered with this game is good enough to warrant a go with it. While the enemies are patterned and easy to dispose of on a level, that includes most of the boss battles as well, the focus of this game is more about getting through a level and its puzzle design.
The puzzles can be downright tricky at times, throwing in jumping elements that require timing, order-of-operation decision-making, and, at times requiring a hefty amount of logic from the player. Once a player gets through one level, the game gives them a break with a random cutscene, sometimes silliness, sometimes branching player choices, and then sends them on their way to the next level.
The puzzles are clearly the driving point of the gameplay and can be replayed due to secret items hidden in them. Most of those secret items are crowns that the player can collect to unlock special stages. Finding and collecting crowns to unlock additional content is a slow-moving, snail-like goal, though, and feels unreachable at times. That might be the only downer of the game, as going through hell-and-back on some stages is required for crown collection.
Upon completing a level, we were shown a little cutscene or given a minigame to play. One cutscene showed Sir Solomon encountering a game publisher, only to give the publisher the boot for recommending that all games must iterate and contain a gimmick. Another proudly shared Sir Solomon’s opinion of taco composition. If it wasn’t a cutscene, though, we would be taken into a quick minigame. Usually these require a few seconds (like the jumping minigame), but there are several hidden gems that’ll offer gameplay that is deeper than the level that was just completed.
Lovish doesn’t take itself too seriously in that regard. It openly satirizes the state of gaming and gives players a good chuckle. These fleeting moments are a nice reprieve from the platforming, and they’re so well-designed.
Lovish’s platforming is quite tight. Levels are designed with steps and platforms that are reachable without needing to speed up or rely on gimmicks for pixel precision. It was refreshing to see this level of consistency in an 8-bit game, given how janky older games end up being. The combat isn’t the most engaging (even with upgrades), but there’s a reward for those who choose to be pacifists.
Sir Solomon’s upgrades are primarily acquired by purchasing them from the shop that’s available very early in the game. The only issue with this is that these upgrades, like directional attacks and dashing, are expensive. They cost an amount of pennies that far exceeds what is seen in the entire first world of levels altogether. The first two worlds (or so) are scarce with sources of pennies. This makes the progression feel slower than it ends up being, especially once items are acquired that offer discounts on the upgrades, along with additional (but still small) pennies in a passive fashion.
Luckily, the upgrades aren’t required until the latter half of Lovish, but the fact remains that the initial steep costs of acquiring upgrades feel far from rewarding. The veteran platformer players in us felt disappointed to defeat the first boss and not walk away with something. While you could argue that the original Mario games had a similar lack of reward for completing worlds, games have changed since the 80s and 90s. Today’s games actively reward players for taking down a big bad or completing a big objective. As a child of an era of more difficult and far less rewarding games, we’re fine with Lovish’s progression; we don’t think modern players will agree with our assessment.
We digress, the overall experience of Lovish is chock full of retro charm. The secondary and tertiary objectives that become available in the late game are smart in how they reward backtracking. Getting new upgrades and learning new mechanics taught us new methods of completing levels and finding secrets, and finding those secrets almost always paid off.
Beyond crown collecting, and a piece of the game that Will mentioned above, there is coin collecting that leads to acquiring items from a shop. Again, nothing from the shop is required to beat the game, but some items make the journey easier or provide an ability to quickly find/collect crowns along the way. That is left up to the player’s choice whether to focus on revisiting levels for more coin collection that opens new gameplay mechanics in the game (such as dashing, stabbing upward, etc.).
In the end, this is a fun, light-hearted puzzle game with action elements in it. Lovish was quite the surprise for us, and we hope there are more surprises like this in the future. It’s a really good bite-sized game. It contains around 50 stages – each can be completed in anywhere between 6 and 45 seconds. It took us around 90 minutes of solid gameplay to get to the final world, but there were enough secrets and additional objectives that boosted that playtime to the four-hour mark.
Despite its simplicity and minuteness, Lovish is an 8-bit retro platformer that gets right to the point with its retro charm. Some of its progression feels archaic, but it makes up for it with tongue-in-cheek satire and tight platforming. It’s a delight of an indie gem that’s best appreciated by 90s kids who are still wearing their rose-colored glasses.
