TEN Switch Review – Ten Floors, Ten Rooms, Ten Seconds!

Brutal platformers are a tough genre to perfect, and TEN by The Bworg is one of those painfully brutal platformers that tests the might of its players. This is not for the faint of heart, as dying is not the only problem that will haunt you but the number that the game represents.

So is TEN a perfect 10 on the scoring scale (Well, 100 for us)? Or does this one need to drop the 1 and simply sit at ZERO? Let’s find out!

The concept of TEN is a very simple one where there are 10 floors with 10 rooms each, and you have to clear an entire floor in order to move on. Oh, and I forgot to mention that each room takes 10 seconds to clear, which caters to either surviving for 10 seconds or collecting appropriate items within 10 seconds in order to move on to the next room.

This is a really interesting idea, but needless to say, this is a tough game, so it is not for the faint of heart. The story goes something like a person having a bad dream and waking up to a nightmarish reality where they are haunted by death at every corner. It has a Portal-vibe about it, which is fun, but it also twists things its own way.

I really enjoyed TEN‘s simple approach to storytelling and the concept of its gameplay. The two come together wonderfully and quickly create a tone and experience that makes sense for what is happening on screen, and that is all you really need from a simple (Simple in concept, not gameplay) platformer.

After clearing Floor 0 and Floor 1, things start to open up more. Coins are in the deathtrap rooms, and collecting said coins can be used in the Resting Space to enhance yourself, which unlocks on Floor 2. You can buy upgrades like more health, double jump, reduce the time in rooms, and even more! This is such an awesome inclusion, as it does calm the heart a little as you are playing through the insanely tough floors. And let’s be honest, any time you can get a double jump in a game, it automatically improves the score (Kind of like fishing!).

Not only are there said enhancements in the Resting Room, but each floor has a free pizza to eat that completely refills your health. This means that you can return to the beginning of a floor to eat said pizza if you are struggling, and then you can return to the agonizingly tough rooms in hopes to clear a floor. Remember, dying resets the floor, so you do have to clear all 10 rooms of a floor without dying in order to progress.

To my surprise, waiting at the end of each floor is a “boss”, but the game breaks its own rule when you arrive in room 10, as the boss timer is longer than 10 seconds, meaning you have to survive the boss’s assault for much longer than the other 9 rooms of a floor. I would be upset by this most of the time, but since this is a small and wonderfully difficult and challenging experience, I found the extra time with the bosses to be much more exhilarating and it makes clearing the floor feel that much more exciting once you do so.

Controls in TEN are tight and very satisfactory. I did not have any problems throughout, and like your solid difficult platformers, all of my deaths were my own fault. That is a good feeling, too, because it is easy to blame games that genuinely have program errors or poor controls, but TEN is a game that excels in its wonderfully simple and effective controls and applying them in a way that makes you think on your feet time and time again.

Graphically, TEN has lovely pixel graphics, and it often reminded me of Downwell, especially in its main avatar design and animations. Things on screen are very easy to decipher, as black-and-white things are designs and platforms, red things are evil, and yellow coins are great! There are also other little things that differentiate in color to indicate other purposes in particular rooms, but I will not spoil those surprises.

The music in TEN is just awesome! Each floor has its own soundtrack, so you are unlocking more music as you progress. Not only that, but every song is fantastic! It has the perfect energy you need for a game like this, and it is just bumping from start to finish.

For a $5 game, TEN is a solid package. Strong platform players may not find this super-challenging, as even I was able to blast through the entire campaign in about an hour-and-a-half. However, for the casual player, this may be a bit above the ability, but there is a sweet spot that this game hits and that is the average gamer. I am sure this will be a fun game to watch on streams and YouTube as well, as it is entertaining throughout.

Outside of speedrunning and trying different powerups in a run, there is not a whole lot of reason to come back to TEN, but that is not a major problem, as the pricepoint is perfect and just about everything else in the game is top notch! If you are looking for a killer experience for a fiver, then look no further. TEN is here in 10 seconds in 10 rooms on 10 floors (Well, except for the bosses, but that’s okay!).

TEN Review provided by Nintendo Link
Publisher: Ratalaika Games
Developer: The Bworg
Release Date: June 3rd, 2022
Price: $4.99, £4.99, €4,99
Game Size: 266 MB