TL;DR: Tokyo Scramble on Switch 2 has a cool premise—stealth horror with dinosaurs—but clunky gameplay, ugly visuals, uneven difficulty, and a weak story drag it down hard. One of the worst Switch 2 exclusives so far.

When Tokyo Scramble shadow-dropped during the Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase, I felt that familiar jolt of gamer adrenaline. Dinosaurs. Stealth horror. A Switch 2 exclusive. And launching in a week? That kind of chaos either signals wild confidence… or a quiet funeral procession.

After finishing all 22 levels over a long, increasingly baffled weekend, I can say this with unfortunate clarity: Tokyo Scramble isn’t misunderstood. It’s just deeply, stubbornly unfun.

And that hurts to admit, because the premise had me. I love weird games. I will evangelize janky mid-tier survival horror if it at least swings big. But Tokyo Scramble doesn’t swing. It stumbles, trips over its own animations, and then clips halfway through the floor.

A Stealth Horror Game That Thinks Trial-and-Error Is Tension

You play as Anne, a teenage girl stuck in an underground Tokyo wasteland crawling with dinosaur-adjacent monstrosities called Zinos. No weapons. No combat. Just vibes, sneakers, and a smartphone with battery anxiety.

On paper, this is my kind of stealth horror setup. I adore games that weaponize vulnerability. The problem is that good stealth design creates tension through systems that let me improvise. Tokyo Scramble creates frustration through memorization.

Every level feels like a pre-written script. If I deviate from the invisible solution path, I die. Monsters one-shot Anne. They’re faster than her. Her stamina runs out just quickly enough to make every escape feel mathematically doomed. So instead of thinking creatively, I started thinking like I was cracking a bad code: Okay, the mantis thing turns here. The bat reacts to this sound. The raptor patrol resets after exactly eight seconds.

That’s not stealth. That’s homework.

There’s a level where you follow a monster through a building and it suddenly whips around with zero telegraphing. The first time it happened, I thought I’d missed a cue. The second time, I realized the cue was “you should have already died once to learn this.” That’s not clever design. That’s cheap.

Yes, the checkpoint system is generous. It has to be. Without it, this game would be borderline unplayable. I was grateful for every respawn, but I also resented needing them so often

The Phone Is the Only Fun Toy in the Box

Anne’s phone becomes the game’s central mechanic. Early on, you unlock a flash ability that briefly stuns enemies. It’s wildly overpowered compared to everything else. So naturally, I hoarded battery charge like it was the last energy drink in a LAN party fridge.

You can trigger environmental distractions: popcorn machines, fans, little environmental hacks that feel almost immersive sim-adjacent. For a fleeting moment, I glimpsed the version of Tokyo Scramble that could’ve been clever. Luring a monster away with noise, slipping past while it investigates—that’s good stealth energy.

But then the game slaps bonus objectives in your face at the start of each level. “Use the popcorn machine.” Cool. So instead of discovery, I’m just executing instructions.

The phone gains other abilities, but nothing rivals the flash. And when one tool outshines everything else, the rest of the design collapses around it. I wasn’t experimenting. I was optimizing.

Some levels are satisfying once solved. I won’t pretend there weren’t moments where I exhaled and thought, okay, that worked. But those moments are islands in a sea of repetition and awkward difficulty spikes. The pacing is all over the place. One mission is laughably simple; the next feels tuned by someone who thinks suffering equals depth

This Does Not Look Like a Switch 2 Game

I booted this up expecting at least a visual flex. It’s a Switch 2 exclusive, after all. Instead, I got textures that look like they’re buffering in real time.

Animations are stiff. Objects clip through each other constantly. When a monster kills Anne, its claws often phase through her model before she gently collapses like she remembered she left the oven on. If I sprint and stop abruptly, Anne slides forward like she’s wearing Heelys.

The balancing beam sections are the breaking point. Instead of smoothly stepping around corners, she sort of… floats. It looks unfinished. Not stylized. Not minimalist. Just unfinished.

This isn’t about raw graphical horsepower. I don’t need photorealism. I need cohesion. Instead, Tokyo Scramble feels visually stuck two generations ago.

A Story That Mstakes Weird for Meaningful

The narrative tries. I’ll give it that.

Most human characters appear as color-coded text bubbles. We’re told Anne cares deeply about these people. We’re expected to feel the emotional stakes when things spiral toward the finale.

I felt nothing.

The only other visible human character, Ray, is so tonally off that I genuinely thought the game was setting up a parody twist. It wasn’t. The dialogue veers into unintentional comedy, and not the charming B-movie kind. More the “I can’t believe that line made it past QA” kind.

The sound design doesn’t help. Certain monster noises loop endlessly, especially in harder sections where you’re dying repeatedly. After my tenth retry in one late-game level, I wasn’t afraid of the creature. I was afraid of hearing its screech again.

GameShare Multiplayer: The Gimmick I Didn’t Ask For

The one novelty feature is its use of GameShare, that clever Switch 2 throwback to Download Play. Technically, it’s impressive. Only one copy of the game is needed. Up to four players can join.

But instead of giving everyone their own character, it splits control of Anne. One player moves. Another handles the camera. Someone else triggers apps. Another crouches or sprints.

It’s hilarious—for about ten minutes.

After that, it feels like an elaborate social experiment designed to test friendships. The chaos is real, but so is the fatigue. I tried it once, laughed, and never went back.

The Verdict on Tokyo Scramble for Switch 2

I finished Tokyo Scramble in about five and a half hours. There’s a harder difficulty if you’re feeling brave. There’s multiplayer if you’re feeling chaotic. There’s technically a complete game here.

But I didn’t enjoy most of it.

The stealth lacks flexibility. The difficulty curve is uneven. The visuals feel outdated. The story doesn’t land. And for a Switch 2 exclusive trying to define early impressions of the platform, that’s rough.

Especially when it joins a lineup that already includes the underwhelming Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour and the eyebrow-raisingly priced Survival Kids. Being the worst in that crowd is… not a badge of honor.

Verdict

Tokyo Scramble is a stealth-horror experiment that mistakes memorization for tension and novelty for innovation. While its dinosaur-infested underground Tokyo setting and smartphone-based mechanics hint at something fresh, the execution feels outdated, frustrating, and emotionally hollow. It’s technically playable from start to finish, but rarely enjoyable. As a Switch 2 exclusive, it’s a major disappointment.