Spooky Spirit Shooting Gallery from Aksys Games is an arcade-style experience reminiscent of Japanese Festival games. Learn more in our Spooky Spirit Shooting Gallery review!
Spooky Spirit Shooting Gallery from Aksys Games is an arcade-style experience reminiscent of Japanese Festival games. Your time with Spooky Spirit Shooting Gallery will be split between two options: Carnival Mode and Party Mode. Carnival Mode offers the main game experience where you can collect tokens. While in Carnival Mode, you can play the lottery to try and win some bonus tokens. There are also special missions for you to work on, such as getting one token in Carnival Mode, shooting your first bullet, trying the lottery 10 times, using cork, silver, and rocket bullets for the first time, clearing one room in the haunted mansion, shooting your first mystery box, defeating a spirit, and more!
Party Mode supports up to 3 local players, and it will feature minigames with special rules. And once you spend enough tokens at Auntie’s Shop to unlock the additional minigames, you’ll be able to unlock Spirit Stairway Challenge Mode. In Spirit Stairway Challenge Mode, you will climb the stairway by playing minigames, as you try to climb as high as possible. It’s locked at the start so that you can have a chance of learning the basics before you dive into a more challenging experience.
You can spend tokens at Auntie’s Shop to exchange them for either Toy Capsules to add new items to your collection or to purchase Minigame Keys to unlock more minigames to play. There are two Toy Capsule Machines to choose from: Goodies and Spirits. In total, you can collect 120 figurines! As for the Minigame Keys, each one will cost 2,000 tokens, and there are five of them for you to purchase.
The game is played by using the Joy-Con motion controls, so you’ll be using the right Joy-Con with the strap. You’ll control the crosshair on the screen by moving the Joy-Con itself. You can bring the crosshair to the middle of the screen by pressing the Y button. To shoot at targets, press the ZR or the A button. The X button is used to change the bullet type between cork, silver, and rockets.
To be able to shoot, you’ll need to spend some of your hard-earned tokens, just like in an arcade! To insert a token, you will need to press the SR button. You might get lucky and find special free bullet plates that will give you free cork, silver, or rocket bullets to shoot at targets. If you collect a free bullet rainbow plate, then you’ll be able to shoot unlimited cork bullets for a short period of time, so go wild!
As expected, cork bullets are the least expensive of the bunch, but they will still cost you two tokens per shot. That means you better make every shot count so that you earn at least two tokens back. Silver bullets will cost five tokens, but they are a good bang for your buck since they pack some extra punch and can be used to knock some of the heavier objects with one or two well-placed shots. Rockets are the most expensive at ten tokens, but they can be used to deal considerable damage to spirits, or to knock down larger objects or groups of smaller objects.
As you defeat spirits, you’ll gain Spirit Seals which will fill up the Spirit Gauge. Once the Spirit Gauge at the upper right part of the screen is full, you will be able to move to the haunted house. Once there, you’ll need to attack spirits as they show up so that you can make it to the boss battle. There are also special items to collect. A charm will protect you from a single attack. A talisman, amulet, and salt will counterattack the spirit when activated, so that you can continue to shoot at a regular pace.
Once you enter a haunted house, you’ll need to select a mystery box to help you overcome the uneven odds. Why? Because there’s a ton of spirits to defeat on your way to the boss fight! You’ll have to make the most of the items you get from each mystery box you open along the way, as well as spend hundreds of your hard-earned tokens to be able to pay for each of the many, many bullets needed to defeat the boss. The good news is that once you do, you’ll be able to collect a ton of tokens from the many missions you’ll have completed.
Spooky Spirit Shooting Gallery offers a fun arcade-style experience on Nintendo’s console in which you’ll be spending hundreds of tokens as you play through different scenarios based on Japanese Festival games. You can play on your own or with up to three players jumping in on local multiplayer. Play in Carnival Mode or Party Mode, unlock additional mini-games and gain access to the Spirit Stairway Challenge Mode, which bumps up the challenge. Spooky Spirit Shooting Gallery is out on Nintendo Switch with a $39.99 price tag.
Disclaimer
This Spooky Spirit Shooting Gallery review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Aksys Games.
