The Wizard of Bug (Nintendo Switch)

The Wizard of Bug feels like a game I might’ve reviewed for the 3DS eShop in 2015. Yet, here we are in 2025, and this “stimulating brain-bending puzzle adventure” is a new release for the Switch. While it starts off enjoyable enough, it soon puts too much emphasis on the brain-bending, at the expense of fun.

There is a plot to this game, unnecessary for a “Sokaban-style” puzzler. I thought the story on its Nintendo page sounded amateur, and in-game, it’s only marginally better. My advice would be just to ignore it, except that elements of it are hard to overlook. Screen real estate is wasted with character portraits (Shirley and Ella) on either side of the playfield. This is not a visual novel! But it does seem to want to be a blend of adventure, dungeon crawler, and RPG with puzzle wrappings. Your aim is to remove enemies from each room, but in such a pattern to ensure that  Shirley and/or Ella remain with one heart left. It might sound confusing (and it kind of is), but with a controller in hand, you’ll eventually come to grips with it.

The early puzzles struck a nice balance of entertaining while still making us think. Yes, I played this single-player game alongside my wife to take advantage of her having a head for puzzlers like this. Shirley and Ella operate similarly but have different mechanics. They aren’t just palette swaps, and you’ll have to tackle each room with their individual and limited movesets in mind. The best puzzles were in those stages where you can change between the two of them. I wish the swapping was better taken advantage of early in the game.

It’s a simple puzzle game in theory, and I thought Wizard of Bug might have some comparability with past Sokoban titles that I’ve reviewed. But the difficulty takes a rapid curve, and pretty early in the game, not long after Ella is introduced. I soon realized that we were no longer having much fun, but I kept trying to plow through, headaches and all. No turning down your brain to play this one.

I suspect the developers must have had an inkling of this, as they’ve made some effort to make the game less frustrating. There is a measure of non-linearity, but it’s limited and will quickly vanish. Rewind abilities seem like a sound idea on paper, but we ended up using them sparingly, as it often made more sense to simply start a room over. Likewise, a hint system seems thoughtful, but in practice, not so much. Once this peculiar take on Sokoban clicked with us, we really had no further need to use it. In fact, when we did it, it just made things more complicated. I don’t know if it’s just a case of bad translation, poor writing, or maybe a bit of both.

Wizard of Bug is a goofy title for this Sokoban game with a twist. It loses some of its early goodwill through needless plot, an unbalanced difficulty curve, and many more oddities. Locking content behind beating the game was also a sizable mistake. You can check out the demo if you like. But this release demands constant focus, and don’t be surprised if it really struggles to keep yours.