I may have mentioned this once, twice, or about fifty times before, but there are loads of budget platformers on the Switch. Thankfully, a fair number of them have managed to break through the barriers of my jaded feelings, either featuring inventive play or simply excellent overall mechanics and design. Desvelado, with its somewhat cute little vampire protagonist, has actually pulled off both feats, making for a solid budget-priced puzzle platformer.

Sticking with the theme of you being a creature of the night, your primary objective in every new room is to snuff out all of the lights. Of course, it doesn’t take long for there to be complications to pulling this off. One problem is that mischievous ghosts and some other enemies will light them back up, initially just requiring that you move quickly as you can to keep them all unlit. It won’t take long before things will get further complicated, with red torches giving you a charge for a dash that you’ll need pretty well immediately, as well as stages that will feel more maze-like, requiring some planning as well to be completed. The fact that you can’t bank your charges very quickly becomes the focus of your planning, as if you’re not careful that can make it easy to end up trapping yourself, sometimes requiring you to take a step back and try to actually plan out your path.

Once you throw in additional bonus stages that will push your skills and precision, as well as ones that will demand that you plot out what sequence of torches you’ll need to hit in which order to be successful, there’s a surprising amount of care that went into making the most of what could have been a far more humble platformer. Without any complaints of substance about the controls, which perhaps take a little getting used to, but are absolutely up to the task of helping you be successful, that leaves Desvelado as a terrific surprise of a puzzle platformer, with plenty of charm, generally smart design, and a tough but fair degree of challenge.