Guayota Review (Nintendo Switch OLED)

by Jim Smale · August 23, 2024

Guayota Review, Inspired by legends related to the Canary Islands and the Guanches mythology, Guayota depicts the story of a group of explorers, sent by the Spanish Kingdom to find the legendary Saint Brendan’s Island. As the protagonist, you will soon understand that this island said to be paradise on Earth, might actually hide darker secrets.

Guayota Review Pros:

Lovely hand-drawn graphics.
3.7GB download size.
Game settings – show interactive button prompts and brightness slider.
The game is inspired by the mythology of the ancient people living in Tenerife.
Beautiful hand-drawn cutscenes, and character portraits.
Excellent voice work.
Puzzle adventure gameplay.
Basic tutorial pop-ups as you play.
Multiple choice encounters and questioning.
3D game World with the camera panning in and out as you travel around, usually to show off points of interest.
Puzzles play a huge part in the game.
Good lighting is mostly emphasized as there are puzzles that use light for the solving of it.
You can skip the cutscenes and fast-forward text conversations.
Markings on the walls give the story and sometimes help with puzzles.
I must say though, the puzzles are great fun and very satisfying.
Rooms may have alternate puzzles when you enter them but the game tells you beforehand. It turns the game from the real world to the darker more supernatural world.
Some of the rooms will allow basic camera movement, or should I say camera panning as the camera always snaps back.
Great Dungeon design.
It’s a good brain workout.

Guayota Review Cons:

You cannot remap the controls.
It would have been good to have a basic breakdown of what the game entails, especially the first dungeon as you are left wondering what the game wants from you.
Loading times are inconsistent and not always great for a handheld game.
There is no real tutorial and instead, it’s just a few pop-ups.
No actual game settings.
Slow delay in menus loading up.
The overall performance is choppy, not smooth with slow down in parts.
For all the good voice work, it all disappears in the game and it’s just walls of text.
You drop items you are holding when leaving a room or area without the game telling you.
The Story feels somewhat disconnected from the gameplay and it makes the game feel like a load of puzzle rooms, not well explained, with a few little drawings.

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