Category: Nintendo

Gardener’s World.

We were delighted to see Ustwo Games’ gorgeous mobile puzzler, Monument Valley 3, make the jump to Switch earlier this year, and today the dev has given us even more story chapters to sink our teeth into — for free!

The ‘Garden of Life’ expansion is now available on Switch, bolting four additional chapters onto the end of the main game, packed with even more of the series’ signature perspective-bending puzzles. There are even some hidden optional puzzles to find in the bonus levels, for those after even more.

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Well that’s not suspicious at all!

11th March 2025 marked the 30th anniversary of Chrono Trigger. Square Enix marked the occasion by announcing that “various projects” would be coming our way over the next year, but so far, those projects have been limited to character popularity polls and planned orchestral concerts. Importantly, that’s not the remake that we all want to see and have been chatting about for years. But we’re still not ready to completely throw out all hope just yet.

You see, in the latest episode of the ‘KosoKoso Hōsō Kyoku‘ talk show livestream (translated by Automaton), Dragon Quest creator and Chrono Trigger supervisor Yuji Horii attempted to keep his lips sealed about where the series is heading — but in saying nothing, has he actually said everything?

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Square Enix’s new HD-2D RPG starring YOU.

It’s been a busy period for gaming recently, and Square Enix is back this week another role-playing release. Following on from the Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake in October, we’ve now got Octopath Traveler 0, which this time puts you in the shoes of your very own custom character.

This game is releasing on the Switch and Switch 2 on 4th December, and ahead of our own review going live later today, the very first critic review has now been shared online. It comes from the famous Japanese publication Famitsu. So, what did the critics at this outlet think?

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Go on, tell us!

We’ve finally made it, folks! This week marks the long-awaited arrival of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. After years of development, delays, and even a restart, Samus Aran’s next 3D outing is officially here for the Switch and Switch 2.

The critic reviews have also gone live ahead of the big release, and admittedly, the aggregate score has got a lot of people talking online. Prime 4 is currently sitting on 81/100 based on 74 critic reviews. At the time of writing, it’s got the same “top critic” score on OpenCritic.

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Cosy.

Chinese dev Seed Lab has officially announced that its upcoming cosy life sim, Starsand Island, is getting a Switch 2 version alongside the Switch 1 release when it launches next year.

Scheduled for release in the nebulous “early 2026” and coming to all the usual platforms, that list also now includes Nintendo’s latest console, where the devs will be offering two modes depending on your preference: Quality Mode, “targeting 45FPS in 1080p”, and Performance Mode, delivering “60FPS in 1080p” in both docked and handheld modes.

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Best footie feet forward.

Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road has had another update to bring it up to version 1.4 following the recent 1.3 patch.

This new patch brings all of the tweaks and additions made to other versions of the game (which we reckon is really very good, actually) to Switch 1 and 2, so there’s total parity across all versions.

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“If we sold, like, 100,000, that’s not so good”.

We have been keeping an eye on Mina the Hollower for some years now. This is the GBC-looking Zelda-like from Yacht Club Games, the studio behind Shovel Knight, that launched on Kickstarter back in 2022, and only recently missed out on its initial release date thanks to a last-minute delay. It feels like it has been a long time coming, a fact that Yacht Club is reportedly painfully aware of.

In a new report from Bloomberg (paywalled), studio founder Sean Velasco described Mina as “make-or-break” for the future of Yacht Club Games. In the time since Shovel Knight, the studio has downsized, faced a global pandemic and divided its teams into two — later reforged into one — and delays don’t come cheap, either. “If we sold 500,000 copies, then we would be golden,” Velasco told Bloomberg, “If we sold even 200,000, that would be really, really great. If we sold, like, 100,000, that’s not so good”.

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And Samus has a brand new voice.

When Metroid Prime 4: Beyond landed with Retro Studios back in 2019, we’re not sure anybody was truly shocked by this turn of events. Retro is, after all, the original developer of the Prime series, and while many of the veteran team members have since left, the sheer quality of the fourth entry on Switch 2 demonstrates that the studio is still one of the very best in the business.

The folks over at Retro didn’t do it alone, though. As highlighted in the game’s credits sequence, many separate companies lent their talents to the development of Prime 4, including Next Level Games and Virtuos.

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A Switch 1 vs Switch 2 showdown.

Red Dead Redemption has lassoed its way onto Switch 2 today, bringing with it HDR and DLSS support, mouse controls and a smooth 60fps. The big question is, what does all of this look like in practice, and perhaps more importantly, how does it compare to 2023’s Switch port?

Here to answer those very questions is the wonderful Felix Sanchez, who has assembled the above side-by-side comparison video to demonstrate how the fresh Switch 2 version fares against its older hybrid counterpart.

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“That’s one I just treasure”.

If you have a passing interest in gaming outside of Nintendo, you’ll likely have experienced the work of Mark Cerny. He was the Lead Architect of the PlayStation Vita, PS4, and PS5 — you might remember him from the PS5 Pro reveal — and he appears on the most recent episode of Simon Parkin’s My Perfect Console podcast where guests pick five games to immortalise on their very own fictional console.

As you might expect, there’s plenty of Sony chat in there, but that didn’t stop a little slice of unexpected Nintendo discussion slipping in there, too. As it turns out, Cerny is a bit of a Pikmin fan at heart, and if that isn’t something all of us capital-G Gamers can agree on, then we don’t know what is.

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