Putty Pals

Putty Pals is a refreshingly-clever platforming game that is best played with a friend. Ideally you’ll both have at least some moderate gaming chops, and if you do there’s a wonderful variety of content within that you’ll enjoy together. If you’re wanting to play with someone less experienced things can still work out but you’ll both have to be patient as they come up to speed and work out their coordination. Solo play is possible but once you get in several levels it becomes quite aggravating trying to coordinate your various button-presses for both characters by yourself. While it isn’t perfect, Putty Pals is an excellent cooperative-play-focused platformer, and that’s not something you’ll likely see often.

Don’t let the bright kid-friendly colours or the cute Worms-sounding voices or the name fool you here. Putty Pals is challenging little platformer that uses its charm to draw you in and its gentle difficulty curve to keep you invested. It would be nice to have more variety throughout the levels, but it’s a fun, gentle puzzler with a steady challenge throughout.

What Putty Pals offers that few others do is the sort of couch co-op experience that can have you in fits of giggles one minute and punching the air with satisfaction the next. The Switch could do with a lot more of that sort of thing.

Even though there are no frills, Putty Pals is an entertaining and well thought out puzzle platformer that is a perfect fit for the Nintendo Switch. The analogy of the initial teaser trailer for the Switch, showing someone handing a Joy-Con to a friend at a moment’s notice, could have very well shown gameplay from Putty Pals to drive the point home. Play it with a friend and only a friend, as solo players could become a bit frustrated from trying to move forward in a game that’s obviously built for two. Our recommendation is for the co-op experience - if you're flying solo this may not be the game for you.