Hammerwatch is a fun action-packed dungeon crawler on Nintendo Switch that you have to check out. Find out why in our Hammerwatch review!

 

Before you begin the game you can choose your difficulty setting, from Easy to Hard, and the various modes available to play, from Campaign to Survival, so there is plenty of content to keep you busy for hours. Survival mode, in particular, will keep you coming back for many days as you try to beat your previous run. You can also choose a class to play as which affects your overall stats. Are you going with a nice all-rounder like a Paladin or are you going to favor a magic spell caster like the Wizard? The choice is yours.

Hammerwatch is a top-down dungeon crawler where you will face off against hordes of enemies as you storm Hammerwatch Castle. Along the way, you can upgrade your character, collect coins, explore every corner of the rooms for keys to gain to access new areas, and more. Once you have finished the main campaign, you can continue the story with the expansion that is included called Temple of the Sun. Not bad, right?

You can upgrade your characters by finding vendors hidden around the castle and putting your coins to good use. The most useful thing you can purchase from the vendors are the combo upgrades so that you can chain kills together – chain enough and you earn a temporary increase in movement and attack speed which can turn the tide of battle.

This is not a twin-stick action release with roguelike elements in which when you die you’re forced to start over from scratch since when you die you simply respawn with all your items and coins intact. There are also plenty of checkpoints that can be activated, which look like floor switches, and will save your progress as you go, so you can make some good progress here and there as you play in short burst or in longer gaming sessions.

The main campaign and the Temple of the Sun extra campaign are set in different locations, and the expansion feels like it’s a brand new game with new mechanics. The developers have put their heart and soul into making Hammerwatch the best game it can be on Nintendo Switch, and there’s still more to come at a later date.

My only gripe with the game is that since I picked a melee character, I didn’t like the attack being mapped to the ZR button since it didn’t feel very comfortable – I was constantly reaching for the face buttons when I wanted to attack enemies that got too close for comfort.

Hammerwatch on Switch is a great looking pixel art game with plenty of content to enjoy both in single player and multiplayer mode. With seven classes to choose from, character upgrades to unlock and two whole campaigns to complete, not to mention the game’s extra modes, this is a Nintendo Switch release that is easy to recommend.

Disclaimer
This Hammerwatch review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Blitworks.