YesterMorrow | Switch Review

I love going into a game not knowing what I should be expecting. YesterMorrow from BitMap Galaxy struck me with its fun time-traveling premise right off the bat. The idea of traveling between an idyllic past and apocalyptic present is a compelling one, as it immediately busts open the potential for interesting game design.

Time After Time

Very few games give as innocent a feel as YesterMorrow. The bright blues and greens of the pixel art pop right off the screen. Every NPC you encounter is a generally friendly individual, and the towns they occupy are quaint and cute. You can’t even kill your enemies, as protagonist Yui doesn’t have a strong desire to off random wildlife. Petting animals is a collectible in this game, for crying out loud!

The premise of the game is to stop the coming apocalypse in the past and to rescue Yui’s family in the present. The Shadows are finally ready to make their move on Yestermorrow Island after centuries of biding their time. These Shadows are dead set on causing widespread destruction across the various villages as well as wanting to control all the wildlife they see. Yui can eventually destroy the Shadows and free wildlife with the power of Everlight, so don’t worry. You can save all the cute little spine worms to your heart’s desires.

Rescue the Light

Everlight is the source of your special abilities in YesterMorrow. These light-based powers allow Yui to combat the coming darkness. You’ll get access to offensive abilities like bombs, but also double jumps and dashes. Every ability has several different functions and are required regularly, so you’ll always be engaged in how these powers will be used in puzzles and platforming.

That’s the majority of the gameplay, these puzzle/platforming sections. There are hard-as-nails platforming situations that require perfection on the part of the player, and these sections are incredibly fun and engaging. Just as often, however, you’ll be required to solve puzzles along the way. While some are as simple as pushing blocks onto weighted pressure plates, they vary up the gameplay just enough to make sure you’ll never get bored.

Nothing is Ever Easy

While YesterMorrow may be a clever, fast, fun platformer that requires you to solve puzzles while remaining fully dedicated to jumping between platforms, it is also an exercise in utter and complete frustration. The game is drowning in glitches and technical issues. I’m surprised many parts of the game passed certification at all. The majority of deaths will not be your fault.

The framerate regularly stutters down to a crawl, but this is usually somewhat manageable. There are certain areas in the dark, however, where you must light torches with your power. These areas are completely insufferable. On Switch, the game just cannot handle these lighting effects. It jumped and stuttered so much that it made me nauseous on several occasions. I seriously had to stop playing a for entire days at a time, otherwise I would’ve been laid out in bed.

Prepare for the Pain

I routinely clipped through walls, missed easy jumps because of the framerate, and died for hours on an easy boss because I would take damage I couldn’t even see yet to avoid. It’s beyond frustrating. There are tons of collectibles in the game, including lore scrolls and clever references to other indie games, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to find them all. Every single time I booted up the game again, all the collectibles I found disappeared from my inventory. There was even a weird bug that happened (no idea how), where the game just gave me all of the map pieces in the whole game, even though I could still collect them in the environment.

I’ve rarely played a game that felt as unfinished as YesterMorrow. When it’s working, the platforming and level design is remarkable. I absolutely adored playing a game with such a positive outlook, as that is wildly rare. But the game made me actually sick to play several times, and that’s simply unacceptable. Once it’s patched, it may very well be a great game with a simple story. As it stands, it’s frustrating trying to enjoy something that actively hurts me. Let me love you, YesterMorrow.

To hear me talk about Yestermorrow, be sure to listen to Episode 319 of The Gaming Outsider Podcast around the 34:50 time stamp.

This review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy of YesterMorrow provided by Stride PR for coverage purposes. It is also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam.