Ginger: Beyond the Crystal Switch Review

Where Super Mario Odyssey was 2017’s defining platformer and A Hat in Time was its heartfelt collectathon throwback, Ginger: Beyond the Crystal sits somewhere between the two, though not quite good enough to hold ground against either. Ported to the Switch after a 2016 Steam release, it looks, sounds and plays like a game from ten or fifteen years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0s9hXMqePI

You are Ginger, a child (?) born from a goddess and destined to save his forest home from evil. He has the power to restore light to the crystals scattered across the world. It’s a simple premise with a lot of charm, but the interruptive exposition dumps and overall lack of cohesion sap any joy from the narrative. It’s like a blend of Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, and Ratchet & Clank, with all the bonkers level, enemy and boss designs to boot. The world is whimsical and colourful, but it falls apart in some key areas.

What really bogs Ginger down as an experience is its lack of polish. Horrible, inconsistent performance, lengthy load times, blurry graphics, chunky UI design and visible seams between textures result in a technical mess of a game that doesn’t look great to begin with. Framerate will drop from close-to-60 into the single digits seemingly at random, with bigger areas being hit harder. Undocked, it fares better. The game looks sharper, runs smoother and generally seems to be a better fit than the big screen. It’s disappointing that the docked experience is so lacking because the game itself has a lot going for it.

On the surface, it’s a relatively simple 3D platformer, split between a hub world and shorter platforming levels, rescuing villagers and collecting crystals. Herein lies one of Ginger’s best assets: the levels themselves have a pace to them that is perfect for pick-up-and-play sessions. However, it could use a better indication of your position in the world, as the perspective makes some of the more challenging jumps a little trickier than they ought to be.

In the hubs, there’s a slightly odd rebuilding metagame in which you are tasked with collecting resources to build various structures. It’s poorly explained, but a unique idea in an otherwise straightforward game. The towns feel lively and evolve as you build, offering new quests and challenges. It gives the game a much-needed tactile sense of progression.

Each world brings its own challenges, with a Metroidvania-esque backtracking design enforced about by the costume system. By collecting new outfits, Ginger gains new abilities—the bard outfit unlocks Simon Says musical sequences reminiscent of Ocarina of Time, while the mouse outfit allows you to shrink down to fit through small gaps. It adds incentive to return to old areas and hunt down collectibles, with some of the more advanced challenges requiring multiple costumes.

Combat is basic, falling short in responsiveness and feedback. Button presses sometimes don’t register, and when they do it’s often hard to tell if you’ve landed a hit or not. The game could do with tightening up, as well as some more animations and vibration to give it genuine impact.

It also suffers from an egregious number of bugs, ranging from minor things like Ginger getting locked in place after a cutscene to more major issues like the autosave system failing, resulting in lost progress and a whole lot of frustration. It’s disappointing to see a year-old game release in this state, but it isn’t totally irredeemable.

So, while it’s not a total write-off, Ginger doesn’t truly excel in any particular area. It’s a mostly-competent game with plenty of charm, hampered by too many bugs and an overall lack of polish. It’s hard to genuinely recommend the game at its current £18 price point, but with some patching and a sale, there could be a fair amount of fun to be had here. A decent game brought down by a poor Switch port.