Princess Peach: Showtime! Is Peach’s very own spin-off game, where she is tasked with taking on the leading role in a variety of plays and defeating the Sour Bunch!  From what I’ve seen, this game features a variety of gameplay, as Peach changes outfits and, therefore, abilities throughout the game.  The demo contains two stages, the Castle of Thorns starring Swordfighter Peach and the Festival of Sweets, starring Patissiere Peach.

As the demo opened, the first thing I noticed was how clean and colorful the graphics are.  This is quite a nice looking game.  But how is the gameplay?  Well, the first level, the Castle of Thorns, takes a bit of time to get to the sword fighting part.  At first, Peach will just be using her Sparkle powers to deal with simple enemies or influence the environment, such as making flowers bloom.  Levels also contain Sparkle Gems, which can be collected by simply finding them throughout the stage or by completing certain tasks, which gives you a little more to do.

When Peach does finally get her sword fighting powers, though, gameplay became just a tad more fun, as I was able to defeat moderately tougher enemies with Peach’s sword, and there was even a decent boss fight, which I wasn’t expecting for the first level.  One thing I appreciated was how fast Peach moves.  On the other hand, one thing I was a little confused by was how Peach doesn’t reliably do this jump attack.  It’s required to defeat the boss, and it’s activated by jumping.  Most of the time, the jump button merely makes Peach, well, jump.  But sometimes, that very same button made her jump onto the boss and stun it.  And there were occasions where she wouldn’t do this, prolonging the battle more than necessary.  I probably only missed one chance to attack as a result, but it’s odd for the same button to do multiple things, especially if it’s not going to be totally reliable.

The second level was shorter, and this time, we got Peach’s Patissiere outfit a bit quicker.  This level really just revolved around minigames where you either make cookies or decorate cakes.  It’s cute enough, and while I was too slow to get all three Sparkle Gems for the cookie minigame, I did do a better job decorating cakes.  Partly because the game is pretty forgiving, and I was able to be pretty sloppy with my frosting with the harder designs and still get it right!

Showtime looks like it could be a pretty cute and charming game.  My biggest disappointment is what I’ve gleaned online, where reviewers agree that the game is quite easy and aimed at a much younger audience.  Frankly, I don’t really understand why such games can’t be made for all age groups, with various difficulty settings and perhaps some challenging secrets that are more satisfying for older players, even if the core gameplay is more welcoming to younger players.  Kirby games look very kid-friendly, and yet most of them can be enjoyed by everyone.  And Yoshi’s Island for the SNES was a cute game that offered a challenge and could appeal to anyone, unlike Yoshi’s newer Wooly and Crafted adventures.  It just feels like Nintendo has forgotten that adults like cute things, too, which is a huge missed opportunity.  Though, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised because I found out that this game was actually developed by Good-Feel, the same people who made Kirby’s Epic Yarn, one of the few Kirby games I couldn’t get into because it felt way too childish for me.

But if you’re not put off by the game’s low difficulty level, or if you have a young Peach fan at home, Princess Peach: Showtime! Is available for the Nintendo Switch for $59.99 and can take roughly 8 hours to complete, though closer to 19 hours if you want 100%.