Do you have what it takes to be the next street Picasso? (insert movie guy’s voice) In the city, you must paint to survive. Ok, bad jokes aside, let’s dive into this piece of street art.

The concept of Vandals is very interesting. I love sneaking around, and the puzzles involving trying not to be seen or caught are really cool. The atmosphere draws you in and makes the puzzle-solving aspect fun. I especially love the use of environments. Like in New York, you can use bushes and jump from place to place via the sewer, or cut through the fence to make a new path. Each new map adds a new level of challenge, from more cops on the street, to objects that make a sound when you come in contact with them. I found myself trying to count my steps, strategizing how I would set my path, and when to use picked up items.

The visual styling of this game is very well done. The maps are very easy to see and the on-screen controls, for the most part, do not interfere with the game much. There was a map in New York where the whistle and bottle icons overlapped a section of the map a little bit, causing an issue of control, but that was the only time I ran into that while playing the game.

With all the fun I’ve been having I need to point out my massive frustration with the controls of the game. The Joy-Cons orientation is constantly off and control of the spray can is just the worst. There is no way to adjust it. It gets so bad that I found myself constantly erasing or just flat out resetting the level I was playing because my artwork looked more like an inkblot test!

I thought I was doing something wrong so I double checked the developer’s integrated instruction on how to use the controls. I realized that it’s just very hard to control. While you can recenter the pointer, there is no way to adjust the Joy-Con. There are left and right-hand orientation settings, but using the left hand did not help me at all… and I’m left-handed! While I like the fact that they tried to make a way to use your dock and play the game, the use of the Joy-Con like a Wiimote did not work for me. So switching to the tablet mode made a huge difference! Using the touch screen made this game an enjoyable experience.

This game is a port from the mobile device market and brought to the Switch with a decent amount of content and plenty of challenges to keep you busy for a good amount of time. While adding an expanded set of controls to use with your TV is a great idea, I found that it was more frustrating than fun. That aside, Vandals is fun and worth the $3.99 price tag.