The Touryst is stunning - and one of the best Switch games of 2019

Quietly revealed in August, The Touryst from Shin'en Multimedia recently arrived on Nintendo Switch and quickly left a strong impression. With its voxelised design, smooth frame-rate and unique gameplay, it's unlike anything the team has worked on to date - and I think it's one of my favourite Switch releases of 2019. Beneath its stylised but relatively simplistic visual design lies one of the Switch's most capable graphics engines - a game that basically never deviates from its target 60fps and never makes you wait more than a second. It's fast, it's beautiful and it's worth checking out.

It's the latest in a long line of technical showcases from Munich-based Shin'en Multimedia - ex-demo scene coders who've managed to extract phenomenal results from all Nintendo platforms, from Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance to Switch. Users of Nintendo's latest machine may be familiar with Fast RMX - an updated version of Fast Racing Neo originally released for Wii U. Fast RMX offers a whole slew of modern effects and techniques at an unwavering 60 frames per second and despite being a launch title, it's still gorgeous - and one of the best-looking games on Switch. The Touryst heads in a completely different direction, but it's equally as impressive - if not more so.

So, what is the Touryst? At its core, this is an exploration-driven adventure game. It's a game that has you traveling across various islands solving the mysteries below the surface. The concept is simple yet the execution is simply perfect. It's never explicitly spelled out what you should do in each area but it's so satisfying when everything clicks. Each island is a beautiful chunk with its own themes and concepts. Leysure Island is one of my favorites - it includes a range of shops to mess around with including a theatre, a music store selling songs from previous Shin'en games and an arcade with three original games.

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