As I’ve said many times before, budget-priced platformers of all sorts can be found in abundance on the Switch, and that makes for a pretty crowded space where you need to put in extra effort to stand out. While there are some that have done what it takes to clearly stand tall, as well as many that are simply bland and terrible, there are also those that are stuck somewhere in the middle. Mechanita, despite having some positives, falls somewhere in that mid-tier, failing to truly impress, but working reasonably well enough to avoid being written off entirely.

In terms of the positives it does have a decent, if simplistic, overall look. Your character’s quasi-steampunk aesthetic is at least different, and comes through pretty well even in a simplified pixel art form. The layered city backdrops also show some care, and at least help to make the game more visually distinctive, something budget titles don’t always take the trouble to accomplish. While you do have a gun, this isn’t a platform shooter, it’s instead primarily used for stunning your enemies, which you’ll then use as tools to help get you around, whether simply as a step, as something to bounce off of, etc.

Where the problems start is that in terms of the overall feel the gravity seems to be particularly strong, and it takes a little getting used to. Rather than having anything resembling a floaty jump, it feels like you drop more like a rock, and it’s just a bit odd since that’s unusual for this sort of game, even ones meant to be challenging. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, at times this can make judging what would feel like normal jumps tougher than usual. Yes, you’ll undoubtedly adapt, and typically make use of stunned enemies to help fill the gap, but with the nuance taken out of jumping a reliable element of traditional platforming was lost. It’s also possible that contributes to the fact that it doesn’t feel like the stages are as wildly varied as you can sometimes see from the competitors in the space.

In the end, while this isn’t by any means a terrible budget platformer, it also doesn’t quite stand out as one of the better ones available on the eShop. I’ll credit it with having a different approach in terms of its platforming-centric style and playing around with the typical feel for games in this genre, but the result still wasn’t as satisfying in execution as I’d like. If you’re game for something that does things its own way, but keeps it simple as a whole, you still may find it to your liking.