Witch Explorer

• Genre: Tower Defense Shmup
• Time Played: 10-15 Hours? Will update when Switch tells me. 
• Too Short/Long: About right, it could be longer if levels were shorter, but some really test your endurance.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Pleasantly surprised, a kinda random acquisition just because it looked cute I thought might end up sucking.
• Why I played: Cute art and Tower Defense + Shmup seemed interesting.
• Recommend to others: Maaaybe if you specifically like the genres and don't mind some blatant fan service.

I got this one on a whim because it was cute and 40% off on release. Usually 40% off on release date is what Switch shovelware does, but it seemed like a few people had good things to say about the Steam version and it looked cute.

The main gameplay is tower defense and you get a small handful of units with different abilities. I think it could have benefited from more variety in its units, but I can also see how that might make many levels too easy. However, it could have used something to make it a little more easy. Maybe just shorter levels at the same difficulty? I didn't feel like it was ever really too challenging, but the levels that were the most, were partially so difficult because they were so long, and if you had to retry and new strategy... you had to play another 10-15 minutes to catch up to see if your new strategy works.

It mixes up the gameplay a bit with some pure side scrolling shmup levels and some challenge levels to gain an alternate currency for some extra costumes for your assist character in the hub menu, and some extra scenes. There are also some unlocks for the hub and upgrades for your units. Pretty standard stuff mostly. I don't really have much else to say. I liked it though, and the devs are working on some other spin-off style sequels or something, so I'll look forward to that.