While Nintendo has always made family-friendly games for their systems, with the Switch being no exception, and there are quite a lot of them in the indie space, I wouldn’t say that there’s loads of variety. Mostly focused on multiplayer action games of some sort, the co-op and competitive spaces have done reasonably well, but single-player affairs have not. Whether the issue is theming, degree of difficulty, or just genre play that’s too specific and less likely to draw the younger crowd in, it’s unusual to see approachable adventures that still stand out.

In the case of Pilo and the Holobook, you have something quite different though, an adventure that stays firmly focused on exploration and discovery, with the primary hook being to simply collect stamps everywhere you go. You’ll play as Pilo, who is on a journey with his mentor the Professor through the galaxy in their laboratory-turned-spaceship. In terms of the mechanics there isn’t much to know, you’ll simply explore each planet through numerous areas looking for new items to scan with your holobook. Whenever you find something new it will create a sticker that can be placed on the appropriate page, and when you’ve accumulated enough stickers for any given planet you’ll then receive a special planet sticker, allowing you to move on. 

The thing is, there’s an abundance of things to scan on each planet, and while there are some specific special items that you’ll see with an outline around them on the page, if you find enough things you don’t even need to get those. This very friendly and loose structure is really what makes the experience all about enjoying the game however you’d like, and while it provides some direction it isn’t very strict… making it very accessible in the process. There are a few very mild puzzles to work out, and there’s a chance younger players could need some assistance here and there, since some areas are tougher to find visually, but on the whole there are very few barriers to anyone being able to enjoy it. Of course, more experienced gamers may find it dull, but I was surprised at how pleasant it all was, and almost meditative in a way like a good coloring book. There isn’t much to this very light adventure, but it looks great and it feels like an experience that knew exactly what it wanted to be, and was executed quite well.