Venture Kid from FDG Entertainment is a hardcore 2D action platformer that will test your skills on Nintendo Switch. Learn more in our Venture Kid review!

 

Let’s get this out of the way right from the start: yes, Venture Kid is indeed heavily inspired by the long-running and beloved Mega Man series. What this means is that you’ll be running and jumping as you shoot at everything that moves, and you’ll at some point gain access to powerful weapons you’ll need to make the most of to survive. What Venture Kid does is pay homage to the King while also doing its thing, with a difficulty that is at times dialed up the “NES hard” levels. Patience and some trial and error go a long way as you spend some time with Venture Kid.

Your mission is to stop the evil Dr. Teklov, who is building a secret weapon: a space fortress he claims is being built to uphold peace. As you can imagine, this is certainly bad news for everyone else, which is why Andy, the game’s hero, sets out on a mission to defeat Dr. Teklov before it is too late. But before you can reach the evil villain, you will first need to defeat all of his minions who will do all they can to destroy you. Are you up for the challenge?

 

For this 2D action platformer, the controls are going to be very simple and to the point. You’ll move Andy around with the left analog stick or the D-Pad, jumping with the B or A buttons and attacking with the X or Y buttons. The L and R buttons will be used to switch between your weapons, and you can pause the action with the + button to access your inventory. That’s all there is to it, which is great since that way you’ll be able to focus on the action as you try to stay alive. There are another four different button configuration options for you to experiment with so that you can find the right controller layout for your playing style.

 

Each of the stages will be bite-sized in nature, so if you have any experience with 2D action platformers, you’ll be able to complete each one in a handful of minutes. Unlike the Mega Man series in which you get to select which stage and robot master you’ll like to take on, Venture Kid is a more linear experience when played in Classic mode, as it has you play each of the stages in sequence. If you go for the Adventure mode, then you’ll be able to select between the eight available stages.

 

As you explore each stage you will find small and large glowing orbs which act as the game’s currency – you’ll also get these from the enemies you defeat. You can access the shop at any time by pausing the action and selecting the shop option at the bottom right of the screen. In here you’ll be able to purchase HP refills to recover one heart at a time, a weapon bottle to refill a weapon’s energy, an extra life, an emergency kit that will give you a new full HP count when your hearts are emptied, a weapon manager that will distribute the energy you collect among all of your available weapons, and a HP Extension that will increase your maximum HP by one. That last one is going to be the most expensive of them all, so unless you replay some of the earlier stages over and over again to grind some extra orbs, you might not even get to buy it before your adventure is over!

New and exclusive to the Nintendo Switch version of Venture Kid are a Survival and a Boss Rush mode. Boss Rush, as the name suggests, will have you taking on all of the game’s bosses one after the other. As for Survival mode, you get access to all of your weapons as you try to complete as many mini-levels as possible. What’s the twist? You only have one life to do this. Sure, you have access to the shop, but you won’t be able to buy any extra lives with the orbs that you collect in Survival mode.

Completionists out there will be aiming at finding all of the golden items hidden in each of the game’s stages so that they can 100% the game. On top of this, Venture Kid features a set of in-game achievements to keep you coming back for more. The objectives include beating each of the nine stages in the game, completing the game, finding all the secret golden items, using the boomerang weapon to collect an item, defeating 200 enemies, defeating one of every type of enemy, buying something at the store, and more.

Venture Kid is a fun 2D action platformer that pays homage to the Mega Man franchise on the Nintendo Switch. The game is available for $9.99, and for this, you get an adventure that will take you an hour and change to complete based on your skill level, an in-game achievement system, eight golden items to collect, as well as two Nintendo Switch exclusive bonus modes.

Disclaimer
This Venture Kid review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by FDG Entertainment.