Disc Room has been on our radar ever since Devolver Digital started teasing it earlier this year, and the razor sharp discs are finally spinning. The year is 2089 and a giant disc has appeared orbiting the planet Jupiter. Take shape as a brave, unnamed scientist decked out in an oversized yellow space suit. Your mission? Explore a sprawling intergalactic labyrinth packed with sharp, deadly discs while you avoid getting torn apart for as long as you possibly can. Along the way, you’ll encounter cutscenes with bits of story and lore to help you discover what’s really going on in this extraterrestrial deathtrap.
The controls are simple and intuitive: use the L stick to move and press B to use special abilities like dash, slowdown, and clones that are unlocked with progression. Your most important objective is to dodge circular saws that move through each room, but you’ll also need to clear various other objectives in order to unlock adjacent rooms. These include surviving for a set amount of seconds and dying from a number of unique discs. Objectives can feel like puzzles that require you to think outside the box and make use of your abilities as you see fit. Just be sure to stay focused and keep eye on the trajectory of each disc in a room if you want to get out in one piece!
When you’re a few rooms deep, you’ll notice there are different types of discs that move or act in different ways. Different disc types and their lore are logged in your Disc-o-Pedia after they kill you. (And don’t worry about death too much. It’s a big part of the game, and you sometimes need to die to progress.) You’ll also notice a large timer in each room showing how many seconds you’ve survived. You can work to beat the best times of your Switch friends, other players online, and even the game’s developers! Figure out the best ability to equip and get ready to grind those rooms for the best time.
Disc Room also features accessibility options like slowing or speeding up disc movement. This can make the game a bit easier or more difficult depending on your play style. Slow the discs down if you’re having trouble, or ramp the speed up to 200% for an extreme challenge! And for hardcore players, Disc Room is packed with extra challenges to boost the game’s replayability factor.
Disc Room looks crisp and clean on Switch with a muted color palette that really lets the blood stand out. From unique hand-drawn rooms to a variety of cutscenes, the top-notch graphics are exactly what we have come to expect from Devolver Digital. The same can be said for Disc Room’s deep space electronica soundtrack from Doseone, the Devolver Digital vet of Enter the Gungeon, Sludge Life, and High Hell fame.
We found that Disc Room runs really well on Switch, especially considering that there are so many things moving on the screen at once. But we found one exception when using the clone ability, which adds as many clones as possible of your character on screen. We experienced a bit of slowdown when using the clone ability, but we hope that a future patch can fix this very small issue.
To sum up, Disc Room has totally lived up to the hype. It’s a perfect action arcade game with a simple premise boasting plenty of depth, tons of secrets, and all sorts of best times to beat. Disc Room’s replayability is truly infinite and you’ll feel a great sense of accomplishment from securing the best time or completing some of the more hardcore challenges Disc Room has to offer. The accessibility options enabling the player to speed up or slow down the speed of the discs make Disc Room accessible to anyone interested enough to dive into this intergalactic labyrinth. We highly recommend Disc Room to everyone, so what are you waiting for? Go check it out right now!
Platform – Nintendo Switch eShop Download
Publisher – Devolver Digital
Developer – Kitty Calis, Jan Willem Nijman, Terri Vellmann, Doseone
Genre – Adventure, Action, Arcade
Price – $14.99
Size – 234 MB
Nick and Sarah are the ultimate gaming couple. Nick is a Super Mario Maker 2 enthusiast, but working with Nintendeal has fostered a love for tough-as-nails indies such as Enter the Gungeon, Celeste, and Cuphead. Sarah prefers sim games like Animal Crossing, Don’t Starve, and Stardew Valley, but she challenges herself by grinding Slay the Spire from time to time.