Review: Constance (Switch) - A Beautiful Metroidvania With Something To Say

Constance craving

The idea of an indie Metroidvania exploring mental illness has become a bit of a cliche. The past decade has seen successes in the genre like the Hollow Knight and Ori games, as well as titles like Celeste that manifest their main character’s mental journey through their mechanics. Constance owes a lot to every game listed above, but uses those influences to say something profound, even if it doesn’t reinvent the wheel in any significant way.

Constance is a game about overstimulation and concentration, following the titular character as she escapes her overwhelming reality in favour of a fantasy realm of her own mind’s creation, manifesting both its charms and its horrors. Every now and again, we get a peek into Constance’s true reality, memories of her struggling to make deadlines at work, ignoring her loved ones and cracking under the pressure of day-to-day life.

However, Constance takes a while to get the phlegm out of its throat before it gets to interrogate those themes and feel like its own game. The first hour left me apprehensive. As much as I was completely enchanted by the iridescent 2D hand-drawn art style and Constance’s smooth, swooshing animations, I couldn’t help but be reminded of other games in the genre, particularly of Hollow Knight.

I don’t mean to sound like a 'guy who’s only seen Boss Baby', but there are assets like levers and elevators that look almost exactly like Team Cherry’s interpretations, and a lot of players might take a while for those comparisons to fully leave their heads, especially when using moves like dashes and wall jumps.

But the more I played, the more I found Constance’s unique charm – the game is making you focus. In some platformers and Metroidvanias, clearing a difficult section once usually means you can run back through it without much issue. Developer Blue Backpack refuses to let you have that luxury. If you take an enemy, a platforming section or a puzzle for granted, you will be punished.

This design philosophy fits into the game’s themes excellently. The opening moments of Constance put me in the main character’s shoes, watching her computer screen explode with emails and messages, causing her to fall into this fantasy realm. If the game is her escape from reality, it makes sense that it’s a space where she only needs to focus on one thing. The idea of balancing work, relationships, food, sleep, and fun is overwhelming for a lot of us, but this is a game that requires you to concentrate. No podcasts playing in the background of this one, Constance demands your attention.

The overall gameplay is lacking any kind of reinvention or departure from what Metroidvania fans will be used to, but those familiar ideas are executed so well that it’s difficult to not have fun. Constance’s main weapon is a paintbrush, linking to her real-life job as an artist but also allowing for the game’s most satisfying animations.

Dashing on the ground means slinking into a puddle of purple paint in a Splatoon-like squelch, with a similar effect in play when melding into walls to wall jump. As well as a health bar, the top left of the screen is adorned with a paint-meter, which determines how much of these special abilities she can use before the colour is drained from both her hair and her brush.

In this state, using any paint abilities causes you to lose HP. I found this to be a wonderful limitation, something that was always in the back of my head during intense boss fights. Some enemies require the Paint Stab to defeat them, but that move also replenishes health when it lands. This caused me to be more tactical when I decide to avoid attacks and refill my meter and when I decide to go in for the kill.

The bosses themselves range from repetitive to glorious. Some, like the Astral Academy area’s High Patia, don’t use the area’s deeply satisfying Aerial Boost power-up in many interesting ways, but are visually stunning enough to make up for it. On the other hand, Cornelis forces you to use the Plunge ability, a harsh downwards strike, in such creative ways. For the most part, the bosses feel a bit too repetitive and lacking more than one dimension. It would have been great to see them exist in more phases rather than offer up the same challenge.

Another essential part of any Metroidvania, and one of Constance’s key strengths, is its atmosphere. It has a lovely blend of that classic Metroid isolation with the feeling that this world is populated by enough people for it to feel alive. Each area feels truly distinct from one another, the standout being Chaotic Carnival, whose deep orange backgrounds and circus-inspired soundtrack make for a memorable trek. Adding to its uniqueness is the area’s structure, being one long boss rush.

The design of key elements like Shrines, where you go to save and replenish health, also make Constance stand out. When saving, we see the character meditate and float into the air, fitting nicely into the idea of this world being an escape. The world is populated by machines both friendly and antagonistic, a subtle way to express technology as a key factor in our overstimulation, but also an indispensable tool.

The only reprieves from the intensity of the gameplay are death screens, where you're fittingly met with the phrase “lost in thought,” and those flashbacks to Constance’s real life. A lot of these take on the form of low-stakes minigames that could revolve around designing a logo or a violin rhythm game. These are a great way to uphold the themes of the game without it feeling too punishing.

I mostly played Constance on Switch 2 and had a lovely, smooth experience in both handheld and docked modes. The Switch 2’s screen dovetails beautifully with the strength of the game's colour palette. There are also Performance and Quality modes for Switch 2 users, which I found to be a bit unnecessary as in Balanced mode the game looks great and runs nicely.

As this is technically a Switch 1 game, I also tested it on that system and found the performance equally as good, even if the splendour of the screen is lacking slightly.

Conclusion

Constance is an example of one of the hardest things in gaming. To take ideas established four decades ago and use them to say something different and interesting is a wonderful feat worth celebrating. Constance has something to say, and it says it well. There are flaws in the moment-to-moment gameplay, such as its bosses and a few tedious platforming sections, and it’s not something that’s going to completely rock the Metroidvania space, but it doesn’t need to. It's a much-needed reminder of the joys of concentration and an antidote to an overstimulating world.

This is an easy recommendation to any Metroidvania fans who want something familiar to spend 10 hours on. Those a bit more wary of the genre might find themselves less enchanted, but Constance is absolutely worth playing for its visuals and ideas alone.