So, I got sent Residual for the Switch early last month. Which might make you think that this is an awfully late review. And, in a way, it is. But there’s a reason.
See, version 1.0.0 came out with a few problems. problems which were severe enough, for me at least, to put it on hold. And there was hope on the horizon; the PC version got its patch practically the day after. Sure, Nintendo puts a tighter hold on these sorts of things, but it can’t possibly take too long, right? Right?
So anyway, one month later, version 1.1.3 drops. And, it really does fix all the problems I had with the initial release. Multifunctional buttons, for one, and sleeping works as intended now! Among other QoL fixes.
This was important, to me at least, because you land on a random planet when you start the game. And lucky me, I just happened to land on Draith. And I’ll explain why that’s relevant using a familiar tune.
There is no water
There is no food
You are to-tally screwed
I hope you like it hot when you work and play
’cause it’s a hundred fourteen F, EVE-RY-DAY
I probably landed on one of the worst planets to learn how to play on. And because the gambler’s fallacy kicked in, I figured I’d wait for things like sleeping and stamina use to be fixed. And eventually it did, hence the (hopefully) fashionably late review.
As to the game itself, the name is survival, and then escaping whatever rock you landed on. To aid you in that, you have a robot buddy.
He. Will. Not. Shut. Up.
After about the 20th time he told me that I ought to eat some food I didn’t have, I went into the settings and turned off voice. I still get the text boxes, because these things are important, but at least I’m not enduring a string of “Hey! Listen!” advice. No offense meant, however.
Residual is a survival game, but it doesn’t have elements you might be familiar with from other survival games. There’s no base building, and at least as far as I’ve gotten on my Godforsaken rock, no way to hunt. For food and water, you’re at the mercy of what your planet provides. Because the point is to figure out a way to fix your ship and leave.
As for the particulars, you’ll spend your time scavenging for materials to make tools, fix your ship, and occasionally complete a puzzle as you delve deeper into the planet. This includes finding alien tech, which is important, but I don’t know why. The game doesn’t necessarily explain mechanics until you stumble into them, so the learning curve is steep. Tying into that, if there’s one real nitpick I have, it’s that I wish there was a bit more feedback when it comes to using items. It’s often a little hard to tell when an item you’re using has the desired effect; for example, I often don’t know whether I’m making contact on vines with the stone axe until I’ve really completed the job. And frankly, couldn’t figure out if anything I had was able to do something to the alien life forms.
Aside from all that, sound design is atmospheric to fit the setting. And since controls are pretty much fully remappable, I have no other problems.
It’s notable that before the patch, the game was stated by both others as well as OrangePixel to be less than stable. I didn’t encounter any such problems with the Switch version, and the patch seems to have taken care of all of that, but I figured it worth a mention.
I would be lying if I said Residual is my kind of game. But that’s not a death sentence. I can definitely see how others would get into it. It’s stable, OrangePixel is always listening to feedback, and its only going to get better. So I’d at the very least recommend the demo, just to see if it’s your cup of tea.
Pros:
+ Survival gameplay loop is solid
+Exploring underground is fun
+Numerous features let you tailor your experience a bit
Cons:
– There’s really not much of a tutorial
– There’s not much feedback from certain tools
– Few options for survival other than scavenging
Final Score:
*We were provided a code for this game for review*
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