Nintendo dropped a surprise ‘Nindies’ Nintendo Direct on us all today and wow did it feature some interesting stuff! A mix of well-established PC indies, exciting new projects and, well, a truly surprising sequel, there’s plenty of stuff in the pipeline for Nintendo’s beloved handheld hybrid.
Night Call
Night Call has you driving around Paris as a taxi driver, interviewing passengers and trying to solve a bunch of murder mysteries, whilst still making enough money to keep operating! It appears that clues gleamed from the in-car conversations are pieced together back in your flat afterwards. A gritty, noir narrative adventure game that looks like a interesting spin on the genre, with a really cool looking visual style.
Monster Boy and The Cursed Kingdom
A sort of follow up to Wonder Boy, featuring a similar Metroidvania/RPG style, which has you switching between different anthropomorphic animal forms and using their unique abilities to progress.
Due to Sega owning the Wonder Boy name, they’ve had to change things up here. But Ryuichi Nishizawa, the series’ creator, is collaborating with developers Game Atelier on this, giving it more than enough authenticity.
The Gardens Between
A puzzle game that has two characters working together to figure out the secrets of some surrealist locations by manipulating the flow of time. Videotapes, old consoles and other retro items litter the world as the game tells a story about childhood friendship.
No clue was given as to whether or not the game was co-op or not, but it certainly stood out from the pack in this Direct.
Streets Of Rogue
The first of what seemed like a million roguelike games shown. This one is a four-player, top-down, procedurally generated action game, that seems equal parts RPG, beat ‘em up and stealth game. Like if The Escapists and Enter The Gungeon had a baby and brought it up on Metal Gear Solid and The Binding Of Isaac. It’s been out on Steam in Early Access for over a year, and this represents something of a full release for the game.
Bad North
Another roguelike! This time it’s a real-time strategy game, that has you defending a piece of randomly generated terrain against a constant flow of invading vikings. Out on PC last year, it’s got a really cute minimalist look and, brilliantly, it’s available now!
Moonlighter
Another top down RPG that shares a fair bit of common ground with the classic Legend of Zelda games. You play as Will, a shopkeeper turned adventurer who battles through these randomly generated dungeons and collects loot which he can use or sell in his store! Keeping yourself alive and shop afloat is the key to success.
This War Of Mine
Everybody’s favourite misery-’em-up hits the Switch. A game that puts you in the shoes of someone living – sorry, surviving – in a country stricken by war. No matter how hard you try to be a good person, simply getting by day to day in This War Of Mine is going to require you to make some hard calls. There’s no softball “good choice/bad choice” here – you’re usually picking from two astonishingly dark things you must do to stay alive. It’s brutal, grim and terrifyingly real.
Children of Morta
ANOTHER top down pixel graphics RPG, just in case you thought there was a shortage. And guess what, this one features procedurally generated dungeons, too! You choose from a member of the Bergson family and use their unique abilities to battle your enemies and save the day.
Everspace: Stellar Edition
Guess what? It’s a roguelike! This time, the spin is it’s a spaceship dogfighting game that has you blasting your way through randomly generated galaxies, taking on missions and dealing with the situations you come across as the game continually ramps up the difficulty. There’s an overarching storyline that triggers as you get further into each run, made easier by the ability to level up and gain permanent upgrades, so you start with an advantage upon death.
Baba Is You
A very unique puzzler about manipulating simple sentences to change the rules of the game. For instance, do you see the sentence WALL IS STOP, and there’s a wall preventing you from getting to the exit? Simply walk over to the sentence and push the word stop out of the way. It breaks the sentence, and will also remove the STOP property from all walls, allowing you to walk through them!
It’s a really cool idea, and one of the more unique ideas in this Direct.
Slay The Spire
A deck builder meets dungeon-crawling RPG roguelike. You build a deck and then dive into a dungeon, using the cards to combat your enemies. Beat the boss then climb to the next level.
Upgrading cards and building a deck that best suits your playstyle is key, and it’s a cool spin on both the card battling and roguelike genre. Out in 2019.
Windjammers
One of the best multiplayer games of all-time (trust us) is coming to the Switch. A Neo Geo classic that is as much a sport game as it is a fighting game, you pick from six characters, each with their own speed and skills, and fling a frisbee back and forth at one another.
You’ll be trying to score points by chucking it into the three- or five-point zones behind them. Diving save, special shots, and crazy bounces off the walls and bumpers quickly turn a fairly straightforward concept into something with real depth and something you can master with practice.
Windjammers 2
And then, quite unbelievably, Windjammers 2 was announced and confirmed for Switch! A sequel that, if it comes next year, will be TWENTY FIVE years after the original! All they showed was an animated trailer that sadly, gave nothing new away.
It’s out in 2019, and hopefully we’ll have more to share about this shock sequel soon. The concept is so solid, all it needs is a lick of paint and it’ll be cracking. Maybe a doubles mode?
Terraria
The Nintendo Switch finally gets its Terraria port, like every other platform in existence. Not much was shown, and there’s not really much more to say about Terraria that hasn’t already been said. It’s a 2D Minecraft-like and it’s out in 2019.
Prison Architect: Nintendo Switch Edition
Another PC classic that features both expansions. This one comes alongside an ‘Escape Mode’ extra content pack that has you playing as a prisoner, trying to find your way out of a high-security prison.
Think Theme Hospital, only with murderers instead of patients. Happily, this is also out now too! Except Escape Mode, that’s coming soon. Summer 2018, apparently.
Morphies Law
A really weird-looking shooting game that has a rad Day Of The Dead aesthetic, where the core concept is to, of course, take out your opponents but by doing so causes different parts of your body to grow.
Different body parts growing offers you new abilities – big legs allow you to jump higher, for instance – but brilliantly the map has areas where you may be too big to get in, and therefore offer the smaller player an advantage! It’s a unique idea, and with the success of Splatoon showing there’s room to innovate in the online shooter genre, this looks like a winner.
And it’s out… Tonight!
