Enemies are abundant and fairly easy to dispatch with your weapon/maiden of choice. Cleverly, Kamiko often requires you to leave one or two enemies behind to carry a key or orb to its proper resting place. If you leave a few enemies behind, others won’t respawn when you return to an area. This idea has you prioritizing tough/fast/projectile-spewing enemies while leaving one or two of the low-level grunts wandering around. Less enemies to dodge makes getting on orb to a podium a much less aggravating ordeal.

As you destroy enemies without taking damage, a combo meter builds, rewarding you with multipliers of blue pellets. Like SP in RPGs, these pellets are used unlock chests, use special attacks, and cleanse the four Torii Gates in each level. While a character can only hold so many pellets at a time, players will occasionally find capacity upgrades to help on their way.

Graphically, Kamiko embraces a colorful, pixellated aesthetic. Vibrant hues pop off the screen, and environments are richly detailed. Enemy demons are well designed, and the handful of bosses are both intimidating and impressively intricate. Accompanied by a high-energy chiptune soundtrack, every level quickly throws off the cliché shackles of “Forest level”, “Fire level”, “Water level”, “Air level”, and develops its own identity. Whether I was exploring a sun-dappled forest or the ruins of an ancient civilization, I never failed to appreciate the attention to detail present on every screen.

Kamiko doesn’t last very long, and it doesn’t need to. Above, you’ll see the actual play time for my very first run of the game; in this instance, brevity is not equal to low quality content. Kamiko is a joy to play; the experience of such a well-crafted, bite-sized game is exactly what I need between bouts of Mario Kart and Breath of the Wild. For $5, I would be remiss to not recommend this game to every Nintendo Switch owner.

Kamiko is now available in the North American eShop, pick up your eShop gift cards here.