Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for June 20th, 2019. Today we’ve got a bunch of news items, a huge amount of new releases, and even a pretty healthy list of new sales. Frankly, it’s a bit of a bear, but I’ve wrestled with it as best as I can. I’d like to thank my coach Zangief for showing me the ropes. All kidding aside, there’s a lot to get through today, so let’s strap on our boots and get marching!
News
‘Puzzle & Dragons Gold’ Confirmed for Western Release
We don’t know exactly what form the upcoming Switch installment of the popular Puzzle & Dragons series will take, but we now know that the game will certainly be coming out outside of Japan. That’s not a given with these games, as the last set of Nintendo 3DS Puzzle & Dragons games remain a Japan-exclusive. There will be PvP elements, and the game is set to release in the West sometime late this year, and… that’s about it, really. GungHo Online Entertainment aims to combine the gameplay of the mobile version with the visuals of the anime series, and I don’t see why they won’t be able to do that.
Beware the ‘Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night’ Bug
A lot of players who jumped on Bloodstained the minute it released are running into some nasty issues. A day one update made some changes that resulted in many players who had created a save file prior to the update unable to progress in the game. With the Switch version lagging a week behind, much of the damage will be minimized, but according to publisher 505 Games, anyone getting the physical version will want to download the latest update before starting the game. So make sure you do that little thing, friends. Presumably those who download the game instead will already be getting it patched.
‘Devil May Cry’ Arrives June 24th for $19.99
If you’ve been looking forward to going a little wild on your Switch with Dante and friends, you’re going to be happy to hear this. The Switch port of Devil May Cry is set for release on June 24th. Yeah, next Monday. The game will cost $19.99, which stings just a little bit when compared to the price for the entire HD collection on other platforms. On the other hand, the first Devil May Cry is easily worth twenty bucks. Just make sure to clear some space on your memory card, because this game is clocking in at a hefty 9.2 GB.
The Next Switch SEGA AGES Release in Japan is ‘Space Harrier’
The West will be receiving a double-punch of SEGA goodness next week when Wonder Boy in Monster Land and Virtua Racing arrive. Meanwhile, over in Japan, a staple of SEGA retro re-releases will be making its Switch debut. I get the sense that Space Harrier is one of developer M2’s favored children when it comes to SEGA games, and with this release getting a few interesting extras, it sure feels like I’m right. All the bonuses from the Nintendo 3DS release will be here, plus widescreen and extra filters. A new mode aimed at helping beginners will see the Komainu who usually protect the Stage 17 boss coming over to assist the Harrier. With them by your side, you only need to fear bullets, but take care that they don’t get hit themselves. Finally, you can also choose to play with your Joy-Con vertically to mimic the original arcade joystick. Not sure how well that will work, but the effort is appreciated. This one should release in the West in a couple of months, going by past delays.
New Releases
Blade II – The Return of Evil ($25.00)
No, this has nothing to do with the Marvel movie starring Wesley Snipes. Unfortunately. This is actually a port of a hack-and-slash free-to-play mobile game, albeit with a fair bit of re-balancing. It was certainly popular in its original form, though after what I’ve seen here I’m not entirely sure why. There are four classes and lots of different loot pieces, plus a three-star ranking system for each level. This one is single-player only, so don’t expect to go dungeon diving with a friend. Did you know? You can buy Diablo 3 for your Nintendo Switch. It’s a little more expensive than this, but it’s there. Just throwing that out there.
Muse Dash ($29.99)
SwitchArcade Highlight!
Do you like rhythm games? Heck, most people do if you find the right mix of elements, right? Okay, cool. Do you play Hatsune Miku games and feel like, no, this isn’t sugary-pop enough for my preferences? Can we… can we turn up the bright colors and high-pitched voices a bit more? Yeah, keep turning that dial. Go past 10. Turn that baby all the way up to Muse Dash. This is a combination of auto-runner and rhythm game, a little like HarmoKnight or some bits of Rhythm Thief. Attack, jump, and use special moves along with the beat and earn some cool unlockables along the way. The art is great and, as long as you’re not opposed to Asian pop music, the music is excellent. This Switch version includes not only all the base content and the DLC released up until now, but also all future DLC free of charge. Right now, that adds up to almost 100 songs. We’ll have a full review of this one in a few days.
Lines X ($0.99)
SwitchArcade Highlight!
This is pretty much a no-fuss, no-frills take on number-link puzzles like Slitherlink or PathPix. You get 100 puzzles wherein you need to connect all the nodes with lines without crossing each other. It’s a nice style of puzzle that I find many people find agreeable, so if you want a low-priced little stack of them, Lines X will do the job just fine. It even has eight different BGM selections, which is a lot more than most puzzle games these days bother with. A good pick-up for fans of logic puzzles.
My Friend Pedro ($19.99)
SwitchArcade Highlight!
Yes, this is going to be one of those days where you might go broke if you try to buy everything I’m recommending. Anyway, Devolver Digital does it again. As a publisher, it’s got a keen eye for developers and games that fit its brand of cool, stylish, and fun entertainment, and My Friend Pedro certainly checks off all those boxes. This is a side-scrolling action-shooter with an emphasis on that sort of slo-mo dual-gunning action that permeated the movie industry a couple of ye… decades ago. Aw, geez. Well, anyway. If you ever wanted to crash through a window and take out a room full of armed nasties with a gun in each hand and a little of the ol’ bullet-time working in your favor, all on the orders of a sentient banana, your ship has finally come in. Weirdo.
Rolling Gunner ($19.99)
SwitchArcade Highlight!
Ugh, yes. I know. Another shoot-em-up on a platform that has tons of awesome ones already. But hear me out: Rolling Gunner is also super-awesome. This is basically a Cave-style bullet-hell shooter, but in the horizontal style that the developer tended to shy away from in most of its releases. Bullets everywhere! A tiny hit-box! Bombs that cancel bullets! Tons of shiny pick-ups getting sucked into your ship as you unleash hot destruction on your enemies! There’s a really in-depth scoring system here for veterans to sink their teeth into, too. Honestly, it’s probably a little on the tough side for more casual players, but if this is your genre, Rolling Gunner is going to tickle you just right.
Catan ($19.99)
SwitchArcade Highlight!
Hey, look at that. It’s a brilliant digital adaptation of an amazing strategy board game played and loved by millions. It has support for local and online multiplayer, and it even includes the Seafarers expansion at no additional cost. There’s even a substantial campaign mode for those times when you don’t have other people around to play with. The Switch is a great machine for digital board games, so having one of the best ones around available on the system is a really good thing if you ask me. But you know, this is still a digital board game, so don’t buy it and yell at me that it’s not Civilization or Final Fantasy, okay?
Slender: The Arrival ($9.99)
C-c-c-combo breaker! But still not a bad game, really. Slender: The Arrival is a survival horror game based on the hit internet meme from seven or eight years ago. It’s a bit on the shorter side but some people find it to be genuinely terrifying, and as that’s essentially all a horror game really needs to do to win over its audience, I can’t rag on this too much. The mechanics are quite simple and probably stretched a bit too far for their own good. This is, after all, an expanded take on a relatively brief free game. Its size grew but its depth did not. Still, if you just want your cage rattled a bit for your ten bucks, this will probably do that.
Duke of Defense ($14.99)
This light-hearted take on the tower defense genre sees you taking a slightly more hands-on role on the battlefield than most games of this sort. Build your towers, go slice up some enemies, collect the coins, fix whatever needs to be fixed, and buy whatever you can. Can you combat roll? Yes, you can. And you should. The game also supports local co-op play if you can sucker a friend into being your serv… er, stalwart companion on the battlefield. It’s not bad at all, but there’s a fair bit of competition in this genre on the Switch so I’m not sure how hard I’d recommend this unless you’re already pretty deep into the whole tower defense business.
Mainlining ($14.99)
Strangely, this game reminds a bit of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?. You play as a member of a government law enforcement group and need to build cases against suspects using a variety of tools. Most of these tools are related to hacking, but even the ones that aren’t will involve your computer in some capacity. The start of each case begins with a file and some bits of information mailed to you. From there, you need to figure out who the suspect is, where they are at the moment, and provide some evidence of their crimes. Depending on the evidence you submit, the suspect will be put away for different lengths of time. If you get any of it wrong, you’ll cause embarrassment for the agency. The whole game is played through a fake desktop that greatly resembles Windows XP or earlier. It’s a neat idea but it becomes a bit too much of a guessing game at times. I’ll be doing a full review of this one later.
Scrap Rush!! ($15.00)
From the developer that brought us Tenchu comes… a Bomberman-like? Hunh. Well, these things happen. Scrap Rush!! is a game for up to four players and it’s pretty much what it looks like: a top-down arcade action game where you have to gather junk and crush your opponents. There is a single-player mode for those who want to do things that way, but it’s clear that the most fun you’ll be having with this game is when you play it alongside a few friends and/or family members. Locally, naturally. There’s no online play in here. But there are unlockable items, and if you have those and cute robots I’m told that you can get away with a lot.
Forest Home ($14.99)
If you like your line-drawing logic puzzles to have a bit more in the way of frills and don’t mind paying a lot more for them, here’s Forest Home. Guide the animals to their homes through eight different forests. Extra gimmicks like bridges help add a little complexity to the whole business, but I’m still not sure that’s worth splashing out so much more cash than you would for Lines X. But hey, unlockable scrapbook items. That’s something. And at least the bells and whistles are reasonably well-done here. The animals are cute and the colors pop nicely. But again, one dollar versus fifteen.
Boxing Champs ($14.50)
Do you remember Boxing on the Atari 2600? This game reminds me a lot of that one. Of course, Boxing Champs has a bit more meat on its bones, but the core more or less matches that particular brand of overhead boxing with swaying and bobbing brawlers. The left stick moves you around the ring while the right stick can be used to fire off a variety of punches by flicking it in different directions. It’s a hoot to play the game with another player via local multi, and the single-player content is reasonably robust. I mean, I won’t lie: the game kind of feels cheap in a sense, but it’s that fun “Data East arcade game" kind of cheap, if you know what I mean. I’ll be doing a full review of this one in a few days, most likely.
The Childs Sight ($4.49)
This game has only been out for a few months on PC as far as I can tell, and I can’t find many impressions of it. What little I have found points to this being a Five Nights at Freddy’s style horror game, but with a bit more freedom. The gimmick is that you are looking through the eyes of a baby, exploring an attic to find out what exactly happened to you. And in the end, will it be spooky? Will there be a twist ending? That all seems pretty likely. Anyway, it’s much cheaper on Switch than it is on PC, so I guess if you’re really interested in this game, here’s your stop.
Queen’s Quest 3: The End of Dawn ($14.99)
Oh, please tell me the titular queen’s name is Dawn. That would be such an epic bit of wordplay. Let me check. Aw, nope. Her name is Eliana, apparently. At any rate, this is another one of those Artifex Mundi hidden object adventure games. Solve the puzzles, check your surroundings carefully, and get sucked into the story. That’s what these games are all about, or so I’m told. You can grab this one a little bit cheaper on mobile, if you don’t mind playing it that way. Reviews of it seem to be pretty decent on other platforms, with the usual fanbase for this developer responding quite positively on the whole. So if you like your Artifex Mundi games, you’re probably in good hands with this release.
Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis ($14.99)
If, on the other hand, you prefer your adventure games to be more of the traditional point-and-click variety, you’ll probably want to look into Secret Files 2. This series and Nintendo platforms have a long history together, so it’s always nice to see the games make the rounds again. Join Nina and Max on their second adventure together as they try to figure out what is causing the recent increase in natural disasters around the world. I’m not the biggest fan of this series, but I know it definitely has a dedicated following. If you are in that number, why not follow it to the eShop and put some money towards seeing the rest of the series make the jump?
Sales
The big news for today is the kick-off of the Australia and New Zealand Indie Sale. There’s some kind of hashtag business going on with that if you’re inclined to search on Twitter. But the important thing is the bevy of discounts on some very fine games like Assault Android Cactus+, Mini Metro, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, The Gardens Between, and many more. Not part of the sale but equally noteworthy is that deep discount on Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2. As for the outbox, FDG’s sales are coming to a close. Those titles don’t get discounted as often as some, so you may want to grab them while the grabbing is good.
New Games on Sale
Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 ($14.99 from $49.99 until 7/2)
Little Nightmares: Complete ($8.99 from $29.99 until 7/2)
OVIVO ($6.29 from $6.99 until 7/3)
The Adventure Pals ($8.99 from $14.99 until 7/1)
Assault Android Cactus+ ($13.99 from $19.99 until 7/1)
City of Brass ($13.99 from $19.99 until 7/1)
Crawl ($8.99 from $14.99 until 7/1)
Death Squared ($5.84 from $14.99 until 7/1)
Feather ($8.49 from $9.99 until 7/1)
Framed Collection ($4.99 from $9.99 until 6/30)
The Gardens Between ($9.99 from $19.99 until 7/1)
GoatPunks ($7.99 from $9.99 until 7/1)
Hand of Fate 2 ($20.99 from $29.99 until 7/1)
Mini Metro ($7.99 from $9.99 until 7/1)
OTTTD ($5.99 from $7.99 until 7/1)
Poly Bridge ($7.49 from $14.99 until 7/1)
Putty Pals ($4.99 from $9.99 until 7/1)
Screencheat: Unplugged ($9.09 from $12.99 until 7/1)
Siegecraft Commander ($5.99 from $19.99 until 7/1)
Storm Boy ($2.99 from $5.99 until 7/1)
Super One More Jump ($1.40 from $6.99 until 6/30)
Think of the Children ($5.19 from $12.99 until 7/1)
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain ($14.99 from $29.99 until 7/1)
War Tech Fighters ($15.99 from $19.99 until 6/27)
Muse Dash ($26.99 from $29.99 until 6/27)
Warlocks 2: God Slayers ($11.99 from $17.99 until 7/11)
Table Top Racing: World Tour ($18.74 from $24.99 until 7/1)
SlabWell: Quest for Kaktun’s Alpaca ($6.99 from $9.99 until 7/8)
The King’s Bird ($11.99 from $19.99 until 7/5)
Blue Rider ($4.99 from $9.99 until 7/11)
Chalk Dash Carnival ($2.83 from $7.09 until 7/11)
SkyScrappers ($4.99 from $9.99 until 7/11)
Joggernauts ($7.49 from $14.99 until 7/5)
Operation Hardcore ($9.74 from $12.99 until 7/1)
Iro Hero ($3.89 from $12.99 until 7/11)
Lost Sea ($5.99 from $9.99 until 7/11)
Sales Ending Tomorrow, Friday, June 21st
Akane ($3.74 from $4.99 until 6/21)
Alpha ($4.00 from $5.00 until 6/21)
Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King ($9.99 from $14.99 until 6/21)
Castlestorm ($7.49 from $14.99 until 6/21)
Masters of Anima ($7.99 from $19.99 until 6/21)
Oceanhorn – Monster of Uncharted Seas ($9.99 from $14.99 until 6/21)
Super Blood Hockey ($10.04 from $14.99 until 6/21)
The Bridge ($2.49 from $9.99 until 6/21)
Tumblestone ($3.74 from $14.99 until 6/21)
And that will do it for today, and what a day it is. Lots of great games to consider in the new release list, and the week isn’t even over yet. Throw in some sweet sales and you’ve got a nasty backlog waiting to happen. We’ll be back tomorrow with the rest of the week’s releases along with any news and sales that come along. As always, thanks for reading!
