Super Adventure Hand - Switch Review
"A fun romp"
Super Adventure Hand sees you play as a disembodied hand walking through a quiet forest when, all of a sudden, you're attacked by two large feet who sever your arm and kidnap it, lugging it away. This sends you on a mission to rescue and be reunited with your lost appendage. Play through 50 stages with a wide array of mechanics, such as: Swinging, driving, pulling, flicking and commanding smaller hands through many different devious traps, until you can confront the final boss and retrieve your arm!
The Good
In Super Adventure Hand, you play through a series of stages, each of which has numerous floating platformers, traps and bottomless pits that you’ll need to overcome in order to reach the coffee cup at the end.
There are many different challenges to overcome in stages, such as dodging buzzsaws, climbing bookshelves, jumping over flamethrowers and crossing moving platformers as fast as you can. There’s even more unique mechanics at play, such as using a large wooden wheel to gradually move across a pool of molten lava using your weight or driving a car across an obstacle course, which I found rather amusing and completely out of left field.
The physics in the game surrounding the hand are pretty cool when you're navigating the various obstacles, which I found really creepy as the hand is eerily realistic in its movement and finger placement and gave me Addams family vibes. Remember the "thing"—that creepy, disembodied hand? Well, this must be his doppelganger.
After you’ve completed the first few stages, you’ll find a watch that will immediately give you access to a timer, allowing for some extra speed running opportunities through the remaining stages. If you are successful and complete a stage quickly enough, you’ll achieve one of three thumbs up medals; each of the 50 stages has multiple times to beat, giving you some incentive to replay them.
The controls are pretty simple. You can move your hand around with the left stick and turn the camera with the right one. Pressing the B button allows you to jump into the air. You can also grab wires and bombs with the ZL trigger and throw them with a tap of the ZR trigger. You can also flick objects that get in your way with a tap of the Y button. There are even a few emotes, like the call and stop commands for little hands in certain stages using the direction pad. You can even give the finger, which was very unexpected, and although it is blurred out, it may not be very family friendly. The controls are pretty easy to use and the first few stages will ease you into the game's mechanics and gameplay.
There are 70 thimbles to collect through your journey and these are hidden in all of the stages. These unlock a few different hand customisation items, such as: nails colours, wrist accessories, rings, etc. There are also 15 handcomplishments to earn as you play.
TL;DR
- 50 stages
- Unique gameplay mechanics
- Speedrunning replayability
- Hand customisation and hidden collectibles
The Bad
While there are 50 stages, I managed to get through them all pretty quickly, maybe just under 2-3 hours, but keep in mind that’s without collecting all of the 70 thimbles or completing all speedrun times. Your mileage may differ.
There are also a few times where the camera can become a little stuck, giving you an unpleasant angle; it doesn't affect gameplay that much, but I did fly off a few ledges when it happened unexpectedly.
Some of the cooler mechanics, like driving a car and having smaller hands following you, are great additions but are never really expanded upon. This is a shame, as these stages are really fun. I would have loved to have seen more of them in the game.
Finally, since the game focuses on speedrunning, it would have been nice to see some sort of online leaderboards. There doesn't appear to be any, which I think was a missed opportunity.
TL;DR
- Stages are pretty easy to get through
- Some camera issues
- Some cooler mechanics are not used enough
- No online leaderboards for speed running
Final Score: 7/10
Super Adventure Hand is a fun romp through its 50 stages that will test your hand-eye coordination. Within those stages, there are 70 thimbles to find and speedrunning opportunities that present some reason for replay. I wish there had been a two-player option included or online leaderboards, as this game’s premise is very intriguing and I'd love to see a sequel with more stages and extra content. What's here is a fun romp; however, it's a rather short experience but handy for quick car journeys or train commutes.
Thank you for checking out our Super Adventure Hand Switch review, thank you to Devm Games for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:
- Andrew Caluzzi (Inca Studios / Camped Out)
- Bel Cubitt
- Jack Caven
- NintenVania Podcast
- RedHero