One Last Breath (Nintendo Switch) – The test

One Last Breath (Nintendo Switch) is a game released on March 28. It is €17.99 on the eShop, was developed by Moonatic Studios and is published by Catness Game Studios. It is a 2.5D platformer (you are limited to going left or right, but in 3D environments) like Inside or Little Nightmare.

This is the 1^er game from Moonatic Studios, a studio created in 2020 and which offered a demo in February 2022, a demo which won the title of best indie game at Gamescom 2022. Catness Game Studios is a publisher, developer and carrier of games, mainly on console . The studio was created in 2014 and is located in Castellón de la Plana, Spain. They have recently ported Koa and the Five Pirate of Mara, Hell Pie and many more games.

Moonatic Studios is a bit hard to find, with an abandoned website where all their social media links are out of date. If you want to learn more about them, go here.

A world devastated by man

You are Gaia, a half-humanoid, half-plant being. You come out of a cave full of roots and find yourself in a quiet place. Quickly, you will be confronted with the current state of the earth, that is to say devastated. The game tries to make you understand the situation in which you find yourself from its settings.

You'll have to make up your own mind about what this all means, although the game's message seems to be pointing towards a shred of hope in this destroyed land. The only real innocent interaction with others will be with animals who will be the only “friends” you will have.

By the power of the earth!!! RUN!!!

Gaia will have a very simple move list; you will be able to jump, crouch and interact with your environment. Jumping and crouching are basic actions: you will do a small jump and crouch to go under a branch or hide from view.

The interaction does everything else like pushing or pulling, growing roots, and activating levers. You will mainly be confronted with lots of small puzzles where you will have to push blocks or activate objects which will help to solve the enigma. You will have to grow roots which are used as platforms which also help in puzzles.

The puzzles are relatively easy to understand, and even running away from misshapen monsters won't take too much effort. The enemies are these monsters that look a bit like the Demogorgon from the Stranger Things series, but they don't do much except chase you or try to create a stressful atmosphere. There are many other enemies like turrets that will shoot as soon as they see you, and various traps that will kill you by touching them. There is also another type of monster that is much more impressive, but they are so easy to dodge that the threat they should pose drops drastically.

Besides, the ability to grow plants is nothing special, and that's a shame. You will only be able to use the root ability at certain key moments in the game, in order to make a root platform appear, and we find the extension of this ability in the majority of the game.

The level design, from a purely gameplay point of view, is extremely simple since you just have to go to the right 90% of the time. You will have a few trips back and forth to solve puzzles and the platforming phases are limited to making a jump to escape or to climb a slightly higher platform, so nothing extravagant to do. There will gradually be new mechanics that will require a few moments to understand, but it is often “go right to continue the adventure”.

It's not the graphic quality that you should look at

The graphics are decent, but despite everything this remains an independent game with a tight budget whose visual limits can be seen. Afterwards, it's more the creation of the sets accompanied by music, a sound design which allows you to immerse yourself in the “story”. The “subtle” messages of the decor are relatively comprehensive, fortunately there is still an element of interpretation to what we see.

The in-game animations are nothing incredible, however the few cutscenes with a hand-drawing style allow you to change the atmosphere for a few moments.

Music signifies danger

The music is very important, because it clearly sets the tone of the situation (sad, happy, scary, etc.). They are not necessarily striking individually, but they force the player to look at his setting to understand the situation in which he finds himself.

The sound design is also an extremely important part of immersing yourself in the atmosphere of the game. Although the sounds are simple, it has a wide variety of tones, which harmonize well with the music and graphics.

Don't run, it's no use because it's already over

A very thorough adventure, but unfortunately very short: only 1 hour to 2 hours to see the end of it. Even if you aim for 100%, the adventure should not last more than 3 hours.

To achieve 100% you will have to find some sort of shiny pillars and a counter is displayed: there are 10 to find in total. In any case for the Nintendo Switch version it stops there, no achievements are integrated into the game compared to the Steam version and its 31 achievements.