Shiren the Wanderer might be the best new Switch exclusive of 2024

Roguelikes are massive these days. You’ve got Hades II doing gangbusters in early access, while even Prince of Persia is getting in on the action. As the genre’s getting more popular, there’s also ways to ease players in, such as persistent progression the more you play – what’s also referred to as ‘roguelites’. You’ll get no such console-based coddling from Shiren the Wanderer, however, which is as uncompromisingly old-school as they come.

You may have heard of its spin-off, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, where you play as a human turned into a Pokémon who has to navigate a series of randomly generated dungeons while encountering and battling other Pokémon. It’s also easier since you can control a team, with defeat meaning you can move onto the next Pokémon in the team. As for Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island, to give the latest entry its full title, it’s just your one straw-hat wearing ronin (accompanied by a talking ferret), and if you lose all your health and collapse, that’s it.

Make no mistakes

Play

There’s 31 floors of dungeons you have to navigate to reach the end, though good luck even getting to the fifth floor when you first start out. And when you start over again, you really do start from complete scratch at Level 1. That means no weapon, shield or any perks that might make the next run that little less painful. The only thing you can gain is knowledge of what enemies you might encounter on any given floor.

In other words, it’s a brutal time, where all it takes is the slightest mistake can cost you your run. It’s one thing when that happens within the first few seconds, but when you’ve managed to amass an enviable build of powerful gear and a good stock of supplies and you let your hubris get the better of you, it’s beyond demoralising. And yet I find myself constantly drawn back in, even if I’ve still yet to reach the island’s peak.

Dungeon crawl

For those scared off by roguelikes like Spelunky, Shiren is in some ways more approachable. In its top-down format with visuals that remind me slightly of the Link’s Awakening remake, everything is actually turn-based, so when you move or use an action, the enemy also moves or acts, so your survival is not determined by your twitch reflexes.

It’s also not so random in design. Each floor has only a few different permutations and it won’t take long to figure out the enemy varieties that you’ll encounter. But it’s however the items that you find that get completely unpredictable, making each run very different, from pots with mysterious properties to elemental effects changing the onigiri you find to keep hunger at bay.

In the spirit of cooperation, it’s also possible to ask another player to rescue you when they start a new run or vice versa (you can technically rescue yourself too but that essentially means starting over again anyway). That said, given this seems a relatively niche title, my rescue requests have so far fallen on deaf ears.

It’s not for everyone but what a remarkable game that gives Switch players a proper kick up the backside. In what might be the console’s swansong year before Nintendo likely releases its successor sometime next year, the house of Mario seems content to coast on autopilot with pretty bogstandard re-releases, even though it’s great to finally have Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door available on a modern console. Hopefully, a summer Nintendo Direct will prove me wrong, but for now, Shiren the Wanderer might be the best new Switch exclusive you can play this year.