A Night at the Races from Mushy Jukebox and Nakana.io is a bizarre adventure in a dystopian world where all you want to do is play a colorful 2D platformer. Check our A Night at the Races review!

 

A Night at the Races from Mushy Jukebox and Nakana.io is a bizarre adventure in a dystopian world where all you want to do is play a colorful 2D platformer. You’ve been invited to a clandestine tournament in which all competitors are trying to climb up the leaderboards. Since you really need the money to continue to have a place to live, you download the quirky arcade game that is being used for this challenge: No Berry Left Behind for TZI systems. All you need to do is be the first one to complete the game before sunrise – 8:00 a.m. – to claim the grand prize.

 

In this mix of an adventure game and an easy-to-understand but hard to master 2D platformer, you’ll move a cursor on the screen to select the different objects you can interact with by pressing the A button. After moving around each area or making a choice, you can press the B button to back out of there. As for the No Berry Left Behind 2D platformer? You’ll move with the left analog stick or the D-Pad, jumping with the A button and dashing with the R or ZR buttons in order to get the best score possible.

 

It’s a tricky 2D platformer, this No Berry Left Behind. Your white hero square will autorun at all times. If you hit a wall, it will automatically wall jump for a bit while changing direction, unless you move the analog stick towards the wall to keep this going. The longer you press the A button, the higher the jump. You need to get to the green square with the checkmark to complete a level, but you’ll soon realize this is easier said than done as new elements are introduced. These include spinning triangles that will destroy you with a single hit, squares you can bounce from to reach a platform, or berries that can be crushed by landing on top of them so that you can then jump towards safety.

 

Since there are over 200 levels to play, there’s definitely a lot of content to take on in A Night at the Races. On top of this, every single level has a local online leaderboard, and there’s also a global leaderboard so that you can see how your skills stack up to those of players from around the world. If you’re the type of gamer that likes to replay levels to get the best time possible, cutting a second here and there as you find the best route possible to succeed, you’ll get a kick out of A Night at the Races.

A Night at the Races is an interesting mix of a minimalist adventure game set in a dystopian world and a challenging 2D autorunner platforming experience that somehow manages to work. It offers more than 200 levels to complete with a good difficulty curve. You can even slow down the gameplay from the options menu if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed. A Night at the Races is out on Nintendo Switch with a $9.99 asking price, and it’s one to check out on the console.

Disclaimer
This A Night at the Races review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Nakana.io.