Umurangi Generation

Umurangi Generation defines itself by its ability to make self-contradiction work in its favor. It’s a joyful romp and a painful trap. It’s colorful, zesty, and empowering, and also bleak, confining, and debilitating. The way it weaves these opposite traits together into a cohesive whole allows it to be potentially life-altering. It has permanently changed the way I see video games, the real world, and myself. It wouldn’t have been able to do that if it weren’t so perfectly imperfect.

Umurangi Generation: Special Edition is a thrilling dive into a world on the brink of collapse, and a singular gaming experience that will stick with you long after you put it down, made only better by the included DLC and quality of life upgrades on the Switch.

Umurangi Generation is one of the most important games of the modern era. It captures young people’s current anxieties in a masterful way, and allows you to approach them in your own way through taking and editing pictures. It’s powerful and a ton of fun to replay, but sadly suffers from slow down fairly often.

It’s a brilliant game, one that gets deeper the more you engage with it, both on a gameplay and a thematic level. It had all the ingredients to be one of 2020’s indie breakouts, and it baffles me that it passed so many people by. I hope the Switch release brings it to a wider audience.

Umuranagi Generation is unique and incomparable –even with its flaws is a game that you need to play if you’re looking for something different.

Under its bleak red skies, Umurangi Generation is scrappy at times, but it's also a bold photography sandbox game that isn’t afraid to fill each frame of your lens with stark warnings of a world at crisis point. It’s more than a game about capturing a good shot, but captures the very times we live in.

Overall, Umurangi Generation on Nintendo Switch is one of the biggest surprises in recent years for me. I definitely regret not playing it sooner on PC. If you enjoy sandbox style games with lots of replayability, photo modes, and photography, this is the game for you. It is best played on PC thanks to the technical issues but I’d be lying if I said this isn’t one of my favorite games of 2021 on Nintendo Switch. Hopefully it does well enough to get a physical release.

Umurangi Generation is fantastic gamification of photography and a unique narrative experience. Tauranga Aotearoa is like a palpable memory after sweeping through its points of interest and history. It feels like a game made for the Switch - but while the port successfully emulates photography action, issues with image quality and controls would leave certain players to prefer the PC version.

While not the definitive way to play Umurangi Generation, this is still a stunning game. With a unique vision of the future, informed in part by current times, it has a strong message, delivered with fascinating gameplay and unique style. If you have the option to play on PC, I would recommend doing so. If not, however, Umurangi Generation is well worth your time on any platform. This is a deeply felt game tailor-made for our times.

Unfortunately the Switch version lacks refinements with several glitches and bugs and even performance issues. It’s still enjoyable to play on Switch, but you do have to deal with compromises in both handheld and docked mode. However, look past these issues and you’ll find a unique indie photography game that stands on its own and tackles a story that goes beyond the basic photographer-experience. It’s definitely a game that should be preserved for future generations.

Umurangi Generation is a game of jagged edged, in many more ways than one. We just with that didn't apply to how it so often feels in the hands. [Issue#361, p.119]