If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that every game is improved by kicking off with its own theme song, and Mr. Driller Drill Land’s got one of the best – sugary, stirring and with just the right touch of sentimentality, it lets you know full well you’re about to have a very good time indeed. And boy does the resulting game deliver on that.
Mr. Driller Drill Land reviewDeveloper: Bandai Namco/Project DrillerPublisher: Bandai NamcoPlatform: Reviewed on SwitchAvailability: Out now on Switch and PC
Coming at the end of an outrageously prolific period for Namco’s Project Driller team, Mr. Driller Drill Land was the fourth game in as many years for the Mr. Driller series. Four short years in which a team clearly enamoured with its own creation had poured their hearts into this colourful offspring of Namco classics Baraduke and Dig Dug, with Drill Land acting like a consolidation of all that had gone before in the Driller series. A small shame, then, that it never made its way out of Japan upon its first release on Nintendo’s GameCube in 2002.
A minor miracle, then, that Bandai Namco has revived Mr. Driller Drill Land for a sumptuous remaster for Switch, and given it a global release too. It’s a gorgeous thing – the vector artwork has scaled up beautifully for the Switch, and on a portable screen this thing just . That snack-sized gameplay sits just perfectly on Nintendo’s Switch, too, with short sessions backed up by an in-game economy that sees you investing in items and objects in Drill Land’s theme park to help you progress. If you’ve never played a Mr. Driller game before there’s probably no better place to start than this compendium of all that’s great and good about the series.
Mr. DRILLER DrillLand – Announcement Trailer Watch on YouTube
And if you’ve never played a Mr. Driller game before then you are in for a treat. It’s a puzzle game, primarily, but one with a focus on action – your task is simply to drill down through a blockade of coloured bricks, avoiding falling blocks you unlodge and making the most of colour combos as bricks of similar hues stick together and disappear, all while you keep an eye on a depleting oxygen meter that can be topped up by picking up air pockets. That, at its essence, is it – this is a one-button affair that’s as brash and blunt as its colour palette.