Ooblets – Nintendo Switch

You start the game off being the newest citizen of Badgetown, an unlucky community that you start improving with the help of strange but cute creatures called Ooblets. These Ooblets all look different from each other and there are many that you can grow.

The game combines elements of farming, creature collection and town life simulation. In the game, you can grow crops, befriend the quirky creatures, and participate in various activities. The colourful and charming art style makes this game feel cosy whilst being able to explore, having funny social interactions with other characters in the town and being able to customise your character and decorate your house.

What Are Ooblets?

Ooblets are little creatures varying in natures and appearance who love to dance! To gain Ooblet friends, you compete in dance battles to progress further, and your fun little friends can help around your farm and can even be dressed in fabulous fashion pieces!

The Ooblets can come in varying rarity, and you can even be gifted Ooblet seeds from other characters in the town for completing tasks which has gained me some rare Ooblets that I had never seen before!

Why did the Ooblet bring a boombox to the dance battle? It wanted to drop some “beets!”

Dance battles in Ooblets involve a turn-based system where you and your opponent take turns to play dance moves. Each dance move has its own power and beat cost. The goal is to earn more points than your opponent within a set number of turns. The dance moves are represented by cards, and you can build these decks with different moves.

Dance battles are the way to unlock more Ooblets and are card-based fights, where different cards are different moves your Ooblets can perform with funny names like One Step Pep. Each Ooblet has its own signature move cards which makes collecting all the different species fun and necessary. This means creating a party is like building a deck but with less choice as you can’t alter the generic cards. You can, however, unlock more cards later in the game which are very useful to collect for dance battles to progress further. Also, later in the game, you can unlock a Dance Battle Barn which allows you to unlock useful resources and accessories when winning the battles.

I found the dance battles become progressively harder meaning that I had to slow my pace down in the story and collect more Ooblets to be able to win some of the dance battles.

Why did the Ooblet bring a shovel to the dance floor? It wanted to plant some serious “Root” steps!

Farming is a huge part of this game, and it is a slow process to plant many seeds and start turning a profit. Many of the plants are used to create other recipes to complete quests and becomes a necessity that you can’t avoid. Trying to get more Ooblets means needing a wide variety of resources and plants as you need a minimum of 3 to be able to have the chance to dance against an Ooblet (especially a rare one.) This makes gardening something you cannot ignore and is super fun to collect all the different seed types as each new area you unlock, gives you more seeds you can buy and plant.

The game features a wide crop variety that you slowly unlock as you progress in the story and can be purchased from each new area you explore. These variety of crops can vary in characteristics and growing requirements, and some may take longer to grow. You can also receive seed packets from other characters in the town as rewards for completing tasks and sometimes, the environment will suddenly change, making growing your crops harder.

Summary

Ooblets at first feels like it’s simple, however with an interesting story and card-based fights to get a grip on it isn’t as simple as it seems! It’s a nice game to play and unwind no matter which genre you usually play. Collecting Ooblets becomes addictive and exploring all the uniquely themed locations like the spooky Nullwhere is part of the slow-paced storyline alongside unearthing the secrets of Badgetown will keep you immersed.

The only issue I find with the story is surrounding exploring these places is how it feels copy-pasted for example having you win a series of dance battles (something even your character comments on) to be able to progress further into the areas.

Adding in the Clubhouses where you can do extra tasks makes the game feel more fulfilling and allows you to explore all the different mechanics to the max (for example growing a specific Ooblet or giving x5 of a rare crop.)