While there may be quite a lot of Metroidvania-style titles in the Switch eShop at this point, I can very honestly say that none of them have played quite like Primal Planet, and that novelty is a great place to start from. Even without dialogue, the dinosaur attack that separates you from your family initially still does a great job of getting things rolling. You’re initially alone, worried about your wife and child, and you’re going to need to fight to get back to them and make sure they’re safe. Thankfully you’ll at least have a little help from a mini dino companion who takes a shine to you, so even before you’re reunited with your family you won’t be alone… and you’ll honestly need the help.

While this may not be the toughest Metroidvania out there, it is by no means a cake walk, and over the course of your journey you’ll need to up your primitive game by collecting resources, crafting better equipment, and choosing between key enhancements with your accumulated skill points when you’re at campfire save areas. These are thankfully placed at pretty reasonable intervals for the most part, making you work to get to the next one, but not feeling like the developers are hanging you out to dry with periodic overly-long stretches. In general the game makes smart use of the tools you’ll have to work with, not just making them crucial in combat but also for some traversal tasks as well in some cases, giving the game a sense of careful design underneath the pretty lush and gorgeous pixel graphics.

Of course, the action is then punctuated by periodic puzzles as well, though most of the time they’re just environmental problems to work around, like how to keep your torch lit when working around a waterfall or two that are in your way. Of course, given the nature of this style of play, there will be backtracking, but for the most part it isn’t as much of a momentum killer as is the case with some of its contemporaries, making it feel reasonable by comparison. In terms of the boss battles I’d also consider it to be roughly in the middle of the pack, with intimidating foes that may be a little too tough to tackle on the first go-round, but who feel very manageable once you get a feel for their varied attack patterns. On the whole, this all makes for a nice mix of exploration, combat, and general adventure, and its prehistoric theming is just wonderful icing on the cake.