Holy Potatoes! We’re In Space?! Review

Holy Potatoes! We’re In Space?! was originally released by Daylight Studios in February 2017. Almost two years later, the game came to the Nintendo Switch. Holy Potatoes! We’re In Space?! features a large cast of potato based characters, and revolves around resource management and turn based combat, with progress being made as you follow the story, explore space and gradually upgrade your spaceship.

Holy Potatoes opens with a story cutscene and battle tutorial that serves as a good introduction to the game’s world. We meet Cassie and Fay, two potato sisters who are searching for their grandpa JiJi. Their grandpa has been kidnapped by the evil Eclipse federation, and the two sisters are going to have to scour the universe and survive many battles in order to find him. After you name your space ship, the game truly begins. Gameplay revolves around exploring planets in your ship, finding loot, and destroying enemy ships to gain the valuable resources you need to survive. These resources can be used to build new weapons, as well as upgrade your ship. These upgrades include more space for crew members, expanded research capabilities, and more therapy slots to place crew members who have taken damage in combat. You can explore any planet you choose from the map, and you’ll encounter all sorts of different veggie based enemies, as well as random events. However, there is also a time limit for each of the game’s story sections. There’s usually an enemy coming after Cassie and Fay, and so you need to complete your current mission before they catch up. When they finally do catch up, it’s time for a boss battle.

Battles in Holy Potatoes! are fairly simple. Both you and your opponent take turns firing weapons at each other. Your ship can be equipped with multiple weapons, with one crew member assigned to each. Each weapon requires a certain amount of charge points in order to be fired and you get a set number of charge points each turn. The number of points can be increased by upgrading your ship, which will allow you to use more powerful weapons and fire off more attacks each turn. Each of your weapons has a HP gauge, and so does your ship. When a weapon’s HP is reduced to 0, it is destroyed permanently. The crew member that was assigned to it also has a chance of becoming traumatised, which will make them unusable for a while. You’ll need to place them into therapy for a while in order to get them back into fighting shape.

If all of your weapons are destroyed, you become defenceless and will be given the choice to either run from the battle or offer the enemy some money in exchange for letting you go. Offering money guarantees your escape, while trying to run won’t always work and may result in you getting blown up and receiving a game over. If that happens, then you’ll have to load an earlier save, which will mean some lost progress. This is because, frustratingly, Holy Potatoes! doesn’t let players save manually, there are only auto saves available.

Holy Potatoes’ writing is well written and often humorous, and features many references to popular culture. This includes appearances by many characters who are parodies of characters from other media, including Doctor Who, Sherlock, Barbie, and One Punch Man. The story is reasonably easy to follow, and there’s even a couple of twists thrown in to keep things interesting. There’s plenty of content to get through as well, it’s certainly not a short game.

Visually, Holy Potatoes! is a nice looking game. The many potato characters are all well drawn and there’s a good variety of different designs. This includes the many parodies of popular characters from other media, who are all immediately recognisable despite them now being potato versions of their usual selves. The audio is also good. Although there’s no voice acting, the background music all sounds great and suits the space theme and the many sound effects add some extra impact.

Overall, Holy Potatoes! We’re In Space?! offers players a solid resource management game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, while also adding some simple space battles into the mix. It’s a formula that works quite organically, and the game’s difficulty also puts up a fight. There’s enough depth here to keep most fans of the genre happy and it’s all wrapped up in a package that both looks and sounds very good. Despite some small issues, it’s well worth checking out.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Nintendo Switch code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.