Sludge Life [Switch]
Developed by Terri Vellmann and DOSEONE, and published by Devolver Digital, Sludge Life is a small open-world game with vandalism right at the heart of it. You play as Ghost, an upcoming tagger trying to earn his respect among the fellow graffiti artists on the island. Armed with your spray cans, you’ll need to keep an eye out for tagging spots, reaching them using some fun parkour jumps and a couple of front flips for good measure. You also have a camera to take photos of all manner of strange things you’ll come across, and believe me - there’s a lot!
There’s plenty of NPCs for you to interact with, and each one gave us a good laugh. There’s so much humour to be had here whilst you explore, from dogs humping things, NPCs’ downright hilarious stank-faces and various animals parading their buttholes for all to see. It’s definitely geared to a more adult audience, with plenty of drug references and the whole smoking culture of the island. There’s talk from the Clops (the world’s Cyclops cops) of a super-secret ‘zoom’ operation taking place somewhere, and if you’re lucky you might just find it and get to go on a little trip!
Since we first saw Sludge Life (back when it was just announced as a PC title), we were instantly drawn to its unique art style (heck - we even made some SL ‘merch’ in Animal Crossing!). With a very pixelated look, different to the usual way we’d describe pixel-art games, this has an almost hazy, dream-like quality to it with its subtly jagged edges and fuzzy look. It’s funny to think how far we’ve come in terms of graphical fidelity, with many of the AAA titles all looking somewhat generic in their quest for realism, yet games such as this are far more visually interesting and appealing. There’s also a few tweaks available within the menu, such as a VHS filter (which is automatically activated at the start, but can be switched off for a slightly cleaner look), as well as having the ability to alternate between sitting or standing to pee, being vegan and whether or not you’re a dog person.
The soundtrack is fantastic, with a really funky style to it. DOSEONE has been behind a number of game soundtracks we’ve absolutes adored, from Enter the Gungeon, Nuclear Throne and Disc Room to now Sludge Life. Here it’s got a really varied, weird-but-in-a-good-way vibe, that’s just super chilled to explore along to. Definitely a soundtrack I’ll need to pick up ASAP!
It’s a surprisingly relaxing game, allowing you to explore the island at your own pace. We did suffer a couple of framerate dips while playing in docked mode, which was a little annoying but nothing overly damaging to our time spent with it, as it continued to surprise us, leaving us thoroughly invested and wanting to know more and more about this unbelievably weird and wonderful world.
With a lot of variety in what you can see and do in Sludge Life, from finding all of the available Tag Spots, keeping yourself entertained with a bit of basketball or even taking a smoke break with Ciggy, it’s a lot of fun. Sadly it’s quite a short game, but it has a lot of great elements - we just wish there was a little more meat on these bones. At £13.49 on the Switch eShop, it’s well worth the money in our eyes, so if you want to see what it’s all about - we’d highly recommend it.
In the end, we decided to give Sludge Life the Collecting Asylum rating of 9/10.
Have you played Sludge Life yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Devolver Digital for the Sludge Life Switch review code!
