First released on the PSP ten years ago, Floating Cloud God Saves the Pilgrims arrives on Switch via Floating Cloud God: Anniversary Edition. Its developer, Dakko Dakko, is best known to Nintendo fans through his notable Wii U eShop release, his Scram Kitty and His Buddy on Rails. Floating Cloud God combines elements from his horizontal shooter game with Lemmings-like elements to create a unique experience.
You play as the famed Floating Cloud God, whose loyal worshipers must set out on a pilgrimage to retrieve a stolen statue in your likeness from an evil demon. As you fly through each level, the pilgrims follow you on the ground. Your goal isn’t just to reach the end of the level and defeat the boss, but to keep as many Pilgrims safe as possible along the way. Because anything that passes is more likely to hit a pilgrim. Pilgrim drops a heart for each threat he neutralizes, whether it’s an enemy or a projectile. Picking up hearts fills the love meter and can be used to upgrade abilities or provide temporary shields for pilgrims. One blow will kill your pilgrim or you. Pilgrims dying means fewer hearts are dropped for you to pick up. Upgraded abilities lose their level when you die. Pilgrims also carry over from one level to another, so scraping them at the end of a level often leaves them roughly in place for the next level.
Floating Cloud God is not a generous game and some bosses can be a real challenge. Oddly enough, her second boss in particular is one of the hardest in the game. It’s not that he has a difficult attack pattern, it’s just that his window of vulnerability is short and constantly moving. You can make him more vulnerable, but it’s not immediately obvious that you’ll figure out exactly how to do that. are often used independently. You can always rewind to a previous level and try to get more pilgrims to complete it. This may give you more resources in later stages.
The transition to Switch is generally smooth. Floating Cloud God’s clean, bold art was originally designed for mobile, but works fine on TV too. I noticed some minor performance issues in later stages when a full party of pilgrims was able to drop a lot of hearts when an enemy barrage flew by. But it was noticeable when it happened… All in all, Floating Cloud God: Anniversary Edition is a great version of a great game. The somewhat harsh initial difficulty curve may intimidate some, but it’s worth pushing through for some fun boss fights and all the little pilgrims.
