When it comes to arcade-style shooters on the Switch and Switch 2, we’ve got quite a lot of classic horizontal, vertical, bullet hell, and even what I’ve seen called cute ‘em ups like this one. Make no mistake, that by no means that this style of shooters is easy in any way. In fact, their on-screen chaos can sometimes make the action tough to follow. All that said, their sustained intensity and the overall colorful cacophony they bring to the table, can also be a lot of fun for the right crowd.

Trouble Witches did take me a few beats to get dialed into, with it specifically taking a load screen hint telling me that by taking your finger off the button to shoot you’ll collect on-screen loot, to hit my groove. You’ll use the coin you’ve grabbed to buy cards and some other power-ups, loading yourself up for bear to take on wave after wave of enemies and loads of bullets filling the screen. Since your character is pretty large overall you will want to keep an eye on the star representing her actual hit zone, as weaving through a variety of projectiles will require some tight maneuvering if you want to keep your game alive.

In terms of variety, there are at least some choices to make to help tune your experience, but for the most part they tend to be variations on a theme, or simply extracted parts of the game like the Boss Rush for people looking for a more condensed challenge. Your primary choices will be between the Story and Arcade modes, which pretty well play the same, just in one case you’ll get quite a bit of dialogue and antics revolving around your player of choice. You’ll also get to choose from a variety of characters, each with slightly different firing patterns, but once you’re in the mix, most of them ultimately feel familiar to one another as you’re trying to dodge enemy fire and blast away. In the end, while it may be a little pricey, this is a colorful cute ‘em up with plenty of personality, so fans of the style should definitely have some fun with it.