Originally developed and published by Old School Vibes and Gray Boss for the PC Steam release, Primal Survivors is a top-down twin-stick shooter set in prehistoric times where you must take charge and survive wave after wave of prehistoric enemies trying to take you out. For its Nintendo Switch port, Afil Games has taken charge and has successfully managed to bring this highly addictive roguelike twin-shooter to Nintendo’s flagship console. If you are a fan of Vampire Survivors or similar titles then I suggest you read this review because you are in for a treat. This is our review of Primal Survivors on Nintendo Switch in which we throw bones and kill a giant mammoth.
The top-down roguelike deck-building survival game genre is a pretty saturated one and with tons of releases every year, it gets very hard to pick out a hard one. However, if you have been on the lookout for a good one for some time then I suggest that you look into Primal Survivors. While on the front, it may look a little indie and this is because this game is indeed an indie title, but it manages to outlive a lot of AAA titles thanks to its addictive gameplay and impressive replayability. After booting into the game, you are taken straight to the main menu and there are not any tutorials here to guide you through everything. You have to choose everything yourself and jump into the game.
Primal Survivors offers two main game modes. While both of them offer the same gameplay, one of them differs in a very prominent way. The Primal Spirits mode is the main mode of the game in which you jump into the game after selecting a difficulty level, your spirit, and your weapon of choice. Naturally, you only have a limited selection when you first start playing it, and later unlock additional options for in-game difficulty, spirits, and even weapons. The second gameplay mode is the Cursed Spirits mode and the only difference here is that it is a little tougher because you are choosing a cursed spirit and while it offers greater bonuses than a standard spirit, it also brings a curse with it that you must endure during your run.
After selecting your game mode, you can choose your spirit. The spirits are the same for both modes apart from the added curse in the Cursed Spirit mode. Depending on your chosen spirit, they will grant you different bonuses such as increased movement speed or increased health. Apart from passive bonuses, each spirit also brings an active bonus that you can activate during gameplay at any time. The final selection is your weapon of choice, and these range from different prehistoric weapons like rocks, bones, and spears. All of these are ranged weapons so you will be fighting the enemies from a distance. Similar to the spirits, each weapon also comes with its unique strengths and weaknesses.
Apart from choosing spirits and weapons, your build will also be composed of different upgrades that you can purchase from the Upgrades tab. This is located in the main menu, and you will always take it with you to the game if you have them in your slots. These are purchased from five unique skill trees, and these are further divided into five tiers based on their advancement. You can only select a specific number of skills from each tier. You can upgrade each of these five times to increase their efficiency as well. While it may not look much, Primal Survivors offers you serious customization for creating your build including upgrades, weapon choices, and spirit options. All of these can be customized according to your unique playstyle.
The main currency in the game is Bones and you will need a lot of these to purchase additional content in the game. You cannot jump in the Cursed Spirits right away because you have to grind and purchase your first Cursed Spirit before you can jump into the mode. Additional difficulty settings, spirits, and weapons are all locked behind Bones, so you have to grind the game to unlock all of the content in the game. This seriously enhances the gameplay time for Primal Survivors but that is not the only reason for its massive replayability.
Primal Survivors’ gameplay is also highly addictive. It is a twin-shooter roguelike so you will move around with one stick and aim and shoot with the other stick. If you want, you can turn on auto-fire as well and only focus on moving around and aiming at enemies. The map never ends so you can never fully reach an end or corner and you can always move around during fights. While the movement is not blocked by anything during normal enemy waves, every time a boss appears, the sides are locked, and you are trapped inside an arena until you defeat the boss. Depending on how well you perform in a run, you will earn bones.
One of the best aspects of Primal Survivors’s gameplay is the combat flow. There is no pause as a wave ends because the enemies do not come in the form of waves. Progression is marked by choosing a new skill every time you level up and this is the only pause during a run. These skills are like cards, and you are essentially collecting cards that give you specific passive abilities or bonuses like added attacks, summons, or stat boosts. These are the final way of further enhancing your build however all of these bonuses or stats are lost once your run ends. After a certain progression, you will have to face a boss and once you have completed all boss fights, your run is complete. This is based on your selected difficulty.
While the gameplay feels pretty refined and addictive, one of the things that annoyed me the most was the slow character speed for the early parts of the game. Primal Survivors really is fun after some initial hours of grinding which may become frustrating for players who are not used to grinding and slow character-building. The bones are really slow to earn during the initial hours as well however once you have purchased some upgrades and spent a few hours into the game mastering the mechanics, it starts to become addictive because you are blowing through incoming waves and annihilating the bosses. At this stage, you also start to feel a difference when you switch spirits or try out the Cursed Spirits mode.
Primal Survivors is a fun and addictive roguelike with a great art style and plenty of customization options as well. If you love portable gaming and take your Nintendo Switch everywhere you go, Primal Survivors can keep you busy with its short and no-strings-attached runs. The bosses are intense but could become frustrating sometimes because of slow movement. If there is one mechanic that I would change in the game in its movement slowing down when you start attacking because it is annoying especially if you are just starting the game. Other than this annoying mechanic, I think that Primal Survivors easily secures its spot pretty high in the to-down survival deck-building roguelike genre.
Final Verdict:
Primal Survivors offers highly addictive gameplay and a lot of options to play around with when it comes to creating your own build. The enemy design is not very diverse, but the crisp gameplay makes up for it. I loved trying out different abilities and seeing how they differ. Another great aspect of Primal Survivors is its pick-and-play nature of gameplay. Being a roguelike, you can pick up, die, and try again later without the worry of losing any progress or important unlocks. If you love playing roguelike survival shooters, you must definitely give Primal Survivors a shot on your Nintendo Switch.
Final Score: 8.0/10
