I drove a forklift around at my first ever job and full disclosure, I hated that forking job. The childhood excitement of driving around a forklift quickly gave way to the monotony of being an adult and working a 9 to 5. That being said, I had very low expectations for What The Fork and thought I’d classify it as undercooked shovelware. While I wouldn’t nominate What The Fork for any game of the year awards it was pretty forking fun!
BASICS
What The Fork hasn’t got much in the way of a storyline but the gist of it is that you’re a fork lift reminiscent of a little tikes car loading trucks for deliveries to stave off being replaced by delivery drones. It isn’t much but some of the play on words during dialogue segments are rather humorous and I did laugh out loud a couple of times.
GAMEPLAY
What The Fork has a traditional board game style map with zones consisting of several stages that unlock subsequent stages as you meet the predetermined point requirement. Meeting point requirements will award either 1, 2 or 3 Gold Boxes which can be spent unlocking new skins for your forklift. The complexity of puzzle stages increases as you move along adding conveyor belts, rail cars and portal style warp gates that add a lot of flavor to what would otherwise quickly become a mundane formula. The solo experience is a competent puzzler but co-op and versus mode is where the fork it’s really at. Playing co-op with my kids on the couch really added to the overall value as we tried to grab a higher score and versus mode had us trying to steal each others packages or crashing our forks into each other. As we improved controlling our forklifts the matches we had became more intense as our point total increased and we had to use more and more strategy to win matches. The chaos really ramps up when you play with 3 other forkers and the game really starts to shine, it is by far the optimal way to play this forking game.
IMPRESSIONS
What The Fork isn’t going to win any awards for graphics, sound or depth but as a simple couch co-op it is a lot of fun. Some wonky physics, a lackluster tutorial and a slightly high price point are hard to swallow but the game delivers on a fun factor and offers enough replay that I personally could overlook these issues. I’d recommend that the cost conscious gamer wait on a sale for this game as it lacks some polish, the visuals aren’t anything to write home about and the current price point offers some better options on the eShop.
-RM
- Many thanks to Bit2Good for the review code, please visit the Nintendo eShop @ What The Fork for Nintendo Switch – Nintendo Game Details for more information.