Review: Tied Together (Nintendo Switch)

You better have friends to play with or else Tied Together has nothing to offer. True, you can’t very well play as a monster chained to another monster without two people. The plot of the game is to be a study subject of scientists to see if monsters know the value of teamwork. Will you and your friend, or friends, be able to cooperate?

There are two modes to play, Duo Mode and Party Mode, both featuring very short levels that last only a few seconds. In Duo Mode, there are 40 levels to choose and is easily the easiest mode to play. Party Mode has only 25 levels to play with three or four people; it can get very chaotic as you try to cooperate with so many players.

Avoid spikes and lava by jumping, floating in balloons and clinging to walls. You can use ramps and windmill-like platforms to get to the keys to unlock the path to the end of the level. If you die but your team members are still alive, they can revive you by whacking you into consciousness. But if you die close to the end of the level, your team can simply drag your unconscious body to the end.

I don’t have many positive things to say about this game, other than the fact I enjoyed playing through it once. I suppose another thing I liked is that the monsters make really weird, funny, and at times disturbing sounds. One monster even makes a vomit-like noise which was kind of jarring.

Something I didn’t like about the game is that when you play and get hit by the spikes the monsters leave goo the same color as them, like blood. I found that to be unnecessarily gruesome in an E rated game. There really isn’t much incentive to play through levels again, unless you’re a completionist. Also, despite knowing it could not work as an app, it has the look and feel of a cheap one. I also noticed a few glitches, where I wasn’t able to float in a balloon and had to restart the level in order to get it to work.

Overall, Tied Together is a short, bland game that could have really benefited by having a lot more levels. I cannot say the game is worth buying, especially at its current price of $14.99. Maybe if the game becomes really cheap and you know that you definitely have people you can play with, the game could be worth playing through once.