TumbleSeed review: exciting arcade update that's full of holes - in a good way

Based on an old mechanical coin-op game, this is a quaint, challenging puzzler that works especially well on the Nintendo Switch

Nintendo Switch owners should immediately add TumbleSeed to their collection. This mid-priced roguelike is available for PC, Mac and PS4, but both its aesthetic and its core mechanic fit particularly well on the Switch, especially in portable mode.

Your goal is to move a seed up a procedurally generated mountain, but the mountain is full of holes and you can only move the seed with a stiff green vine that stretches horizontally across the whole screen, using the left and right analogue sticks to tilt each side up and down. The notion of using a horizontal bar to move a round object up a holey course might sound original, but it's directly inspired by a 1983 mechanical arcade game called Ice Cold Beer (and, in fact, Shrek n' Roll used a similar mechanic in 2007). Developer Benedict Fritz made a derivative digital prototype, designer Greg Wohlwend saw it on Vine, and the two teamed up to turn that simple project into a game.