Umurangi Generation

Umurangi Generation: Special Edition is a thrilling dive into a world on the brink of collapse, and a singular gaming experience that will stick with you long after you put it down, made only better by the included DLC and quality of life upgrades on the Switch.

Umurangi Generation defines itself by its ability to make self-contradiction work in its favor. It’s a joyful romp and a painful trap. It’s colorful, zesty, and empowering, and also bleak, confining, and debilitating. The way it weaves these opposite traits together into a cohesive whole allows it to be potentially life-altering. It has permanently changed the way I see video games, the real world, and myself. It wouldn’t have been able to do that if it weren’t so perfectly imperfect.

Umurangi Generation is fantastic gamification of photography and a unique narrative experience. Tauranga Aotearoa is like a palpable memory after sweeping through its points of interest and history. It feels like a game made for the Switch - but while the port successfully emulates photography action, issues with image quality and controls would leave certain players to prefer the PC version.

Under its bleak red skies, Umurangi Generation is scrappy at times, but it's also a bold photography sandbox game that isn’t afraid to fill each frame of your lens with stark warnings of a world at crisis point. It’s more than a game about capturing a good shot, but captures the very times we live in.

Overall, Umurangi Generation on Nintendo Switch is one of the biggest surprises in recent years for me. I definitely regret not playing it sooner on PC. If you enjoy sandbox style games with lots of replayability, photo modes, and photography, this is the game for you. It is best played on PC thanks to the technical issues but I’d be lying if I said this isn’t one of my favorite games of 2021 on Nintendo Switch. Hopefully it does well enough to get a physical release.