We had an inkling a Nintendo Indie Direct was imminent. The eShop almost constantly gains 30+ eShop titles per week. If fewer than 20 are showing as upcoming in any given week, it usually means a bunch of surprise releases are incoming.
This week was looking slow, then ‘boom!’ – a new Nintendo Indie Direct.
Load up the eShop today, and you’ll be able to download the well-received pixel art Metroidvania Axiom Verge 2, the time-consuming slime wrangler Slime Rancher: Plortable Edition, turn-based narrative roguelike Curious Expedition 2, dungeon-crawling dating sim Boyfriend Dungeon, the puzzle-filled adventure Garden Story, and the island creator ISLANDERS: Console Edition.
Going back to scheduled programming, other releases include the card battler Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle – which boasts an 80% Metacritic – breezy JRPG WitchSpring3 Re:Fin (reportedly welcoming to franchise newcomers), stylised racer art of rally, comic book third-person shooter FORECLOSED, and Button City – a colourful, and cutesy, quest to save a town’s arcade.
Faraday Protocol should be with us too. This first-person story-driven puzzle game is flying under the radar, despite looking quite promising.
As always, the full list of new eShop releases can be found below.
New Switch eShop releases
Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle – £44.99
The next evolution in card battles has arrived!
Team up with characters from the hit Shadowverse anime in this thrilling card battle game. With spectacular new summoning animations and exclusive cards, take on your rivals in story mode or head online to challenge your friends!
PAW Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls – £34.99
A big city means a bigger adventure! When Ryder and the PAW Patrol learn that Mayor Humdinger has taken over a buzzing metropolis, they must race into action to save Adventure City from his selfish scheming. The pups need YOU to join Team PAWsome!
So, Adventure City here we come! Be your favorite pups including Chase, Skye, Marshall, and new streetwise city girl, Liberty – and use their unique abilities in high-adrenaline rescue missions. Use next-level gadgets and vehicles to explore all-new locations from PAW Patrol: The Movie. And have fun with minigames like Pup Pup Boogie, Runners, and more. You can play solo, or in couch co-pup mode with a friend, in this fun-for-all 3D platforming adventure.
The PAW Patrol pups were born to be heroes – are you ready to join them on their bravest mission yet?!
WitchSpring3 [Re:Fine] The Story of Eirudy – £34.99
WitchSpring3 Re:Fine – The Story of Eirudy takes you deep into the Misty Forest, where the Witch Eirudy lives secluded from the rest of the world, when one day she meets an adventurous young man named Adrian in the forest, Eirudy’s life changes as she is thrown into the tide that determines the fate of deities and humans. The adventure begins and leads you down to an entwined path between light and darkness – which patch will you choose?
With Japanese voice actors, and text fully localized into English, the game is a stand-alone title in the Witch Spring Universe. It comes with new visuals and sound, very cute art style and loveable characters.
art of rally – £19.49
“To do something dangerous with style is art…”
art of rally is a stylized experience inspired by the golden era of rally from the creator of Absolute Drift.
Race across the world through colourful and stylised environments in top-down view. Compete for first place in the leaderboards with daily and weekly challenges.
Will you master the art of rally?
Faraday Protocol – £TBA
Faraday Protocol is a first-person, story-driven puzzle game that will test your curiosity and keen perception. You are Raug Zeekon: interstellar archeologist from planet Cunor. You have been sent by your company to investigate the source of a mysterious signal coming from an unexplored star system. As you deploy from your spaceship, you’ll find yourself in a new and unknown environment.
A voice will welcome you to “Opis†– the mysterious place where you have landed. Opis is structured with a succession of puzzles and trials you’ll need to conquer in order to keep exploring. Solve intricate puzzles by re-distributing energy through the use of your Bia-Tool and demonstrate your abilities during the stations’ challenges. The mysteries of Opis are hidden within its core. Who built it? When and why? And where are they now? Investigate lore elements spread throughout the station, interact with the governing A.I. “Iris”, and expose secrets lost in the millennia.
Poker Champion: Texas Hold’em – £8.99
Is your bluff good enough to convince your opponent? Are you brave enough to stake it all?
Want to learn how to play poker? Flush, straight, three-of-a-kind, pair, and what beats what? If you love card games, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a poker star or just a beginner. Playing our poker game allows you to gain valuable experience! Understand and master the poker hand rankings with Poker Champion: Texas Hold’em! Enjoy a real casino atmosphere and show who rocks!
Crimson Spires – £17.99
Take the role of Sheriff Erika Wright as an investigation brings her to the small mining town of Bataille, where she is suddenly trapped by a ring of deadly, glowing towers encircling the community. Here she meets residents of a disarming variety, from extreme conspiracy theorists to wealthy vampires and a serial killer. Guide Erika’s decisions as she forms uneasy alliances and finds love through partnership. Amidst the horrors facing Bataille, romance can blossom with the few people Erika might be able to trust. Each possible relationship reveals valuable secrets about the towers and their surrounding mystery.
Blending an eerie atmosphere with romance and supernatural mystery, Crimson Spires presents its otome-style narrative with an uncommon degree of freedom. Along its multiple story paths, the experience shifts between rich 2D character art and 3D exploration, allowing you to investigate building interiors and immersing you in the town of Bataille.
Additionally, this updated version of Crimson Spires includes New Game Plus content that unlocks after completing all other story routes, interweaving previous narrative threads and bringing Erika’s tale to a climactic finish driven by player choice!
Necrobarista – Final Pour – – £16.19
“This is a story about death and coffee.”
Inspired equally by film and anime, Necrobarista is a unique take on the visual novel medium. Follow a dynamic and diverse cast of characters as they navigate Melbourne’s hipstery coffee culture, the questionable ethics of necromancy, and the process of letting go.
ISLANDERS: Console Edition – £4.49
ISLANDERS Console Edition is a relaxing, minimalist strategy game about building cities on colourful islands.
With simple and intuitive building mechanics, you have the freedom to create your own cities on the rugged cliffs of the game’s islands in half an hour or less.
Explore these procedurally generated Islands from lush green grasslands to dry deserts and snowy mountainscapes and expand your settlements from sprawling villages to vast cities.
Garden Story – £17.99
Unify a broken community as the newly-appointed Guardian of The Grove. Traverse a vibrant island to combat invasive Rot, inspire its inhabitants, and rebuild your home. You won’t have to do this alone: fruity friends await, ready to lend a hand!
Concord, the youngest grape in The Grove, is now a Guardian, and it’s their job to help restore the island. That’s a lot to shoulder for a grape barely off the vine… and more than a few inhabitants are skeptical they have what it takes. Fortunately, Concord has friends like Elderberry, Rana, and Fuji on their side! With their help, you can take on the dangerous Rot and find ways to encourage other residents to assist in the efforts.
The Grove is your home, and your work will affect change for the better! Protect your friends, gather precious materials, and repair social ties and structures by bringing the fruits, fungi, and frogs of each village together as they work to fend off the Rot that threatens to destroy your home for good. Guide Concord’s restoration efforts and earn the trust of the community: help others with their problems, and they’ll offer you help in turn!
There’s plenty of work to be done, but don’t forget to take time and appreciate this lush world and the fruits of your labour. Listen to the sweet and catchy music of the island, relax in The Grove’s cozy and inviting atmosphere, cultivate gardens and libraries, and enjoy the delightful personalities you’ll meet along the way.
Boyfriend Dungeon – £15.29
Capture the hearts of swords to level them up in this “shack-and-slash†dungeon crawling adventure. Date up to seven weapons, from dancing swords to heart-piercing daggers.
For your summer job, you’re tasked with clearing the creatures in “the dunjâ€. Soon you discover weapons you find transform into cuties… and they’re SINGLE! (What a craaazy coincidence because you also happen to be up for grabs yourself.)
Inclusive, tasteful approach to gender and sexuality with male, female, and non-binary romance. Generated action-combat dunj and challenges! Stay sharp!
Spend the cash you earn on romantic outings to forge precious moments with your lovers and work together to clear the rampant monster infestations, because after all, a couple that slays together, stays together.
Axiom Verge 2 – £16.19
The long awaited sequel to Axiom Verge, Axiom Verge 2 expands on the universe with completely new characters, abilities, and gameplay.
Curious Expedition 2 – £16.99
Curious Expedition 2 comes to Nintendo Switch! Discover a turn-based narrative roguelike set in a reimagined version of the late 19th century. Weaving procedural gameplay that masterfully combines compelling story elements to create epic adventures every time you play.
Tomb Sweeper – £2.69
Tomb Sweeper is an intense and exciting maze game. It’s a unique and interesting title where your focus is to try to move the player from wall to all or corner to corner in order to create a path and complete the level. Once the level is full of colour, you can reach the next level. There are more than 100 levels to go through, and you will have a lot of fun enjoying every moment, while also testing your skills. Do you have what it takes to complete all levels?
Black Book – £22.49
A fusion of card-based RPGs and Adventure games, “Black Book†is a haunting tale of a young sorceress, who gave her life to serve the dark forces. Dive into the cold, yet alluring world of Slavic folktales – and uncover the secrets that hide in the darkness.
A young girl named Vasilisa, destined to become a witch, decides to throw her fate away and marry her beloved – but that dream is shattered when her betrothed dies under mysterious circumstances.
Aching for her lost love, Vasilisa seeks out the Black Book – a demonic artifact said to be powerful enough to grant any wish to the one who uncovers all 7 of its seals. Join Vasilisa in her adventures across the rural countryside, as she solves the woes of the common folk by confronting demons and performing exorcisms.
Super Hiking League DX – £4.49
Who’s the best 2D platformer in the world? Find out in the League!
Join Nelson in the Super Hiking League! An evil wizard is making the mountains disappear in a plan to make the world perfectly flat! As a member of the Super Hiking League you will not let this happen. Compete in climbing matches against other Hikers to collect all magic gems and stop his plans!
Super Hiking League provides tight jump-rope-bend-swing-win gameplay with beautiful 8-bit+ graphics and a top notch authentic 8-bit soundtrack!
Button City – £15.99
Fennel is a shy little fox who just moved into town. After discovering the local arcade, he makes new friends and gets swept up in a whirlwind adventure to save it from being shut down at the paws of greedy fat cat Peppermint Pepperbottom!
Button City is a colorful low poly narrative adventure game about friendship and community. Enter a pastel diorama world inspired by 90’s nostalgia and filled with cute characters to befriend. Complete quirky quests around town, play arcade games, collect fun costumes, solve puzzles and more as you follow a story about growing up and saving the things that are important to you.
Dungeon’s Hell – £2.69
Do you have what it takes to tackle the Dungeon’s Hell? This exciting and fun game for everyone has 60+ different and really hard levels that you need to complete in order to show your prowess. It’s a very engaging game with endless gameplay, and you can always test out new ways to enjoy the experience and immerse yourself as much as possible.
With Dungeon’s Hell, you always have a cool platforming experience and you need to test your skills in order to win!
Magnus Failure – £3.59
The protagonist of the game is a person who, for unknown reasons, finds himself in the isolation of other people and scans the radio in search of a signal. The appearance of a seemingly incomprehensible message makes you want to find the sender. So you set off on a journey through the unique world of Magnus Failure! Solve puzzles using the right combination of items, find them in the surrounding world and solve mini-logic games. The world is full of mechanisms that open up new locations for the player.
Magnus Failure is an atmospheric journey through the mysterious world of signs, symbols and clues that make up the plot of the game. What surrounds the player is ambiguous. He can freely interpret what happened to the world and why the hero was left alone. The unique graphic aesthetics of the game deepens the overwhelming impression of being in a different reality. The protagonist himself is quite an unusual character because he wears a huge helmet with an attached mask straight from the Japanese kabuki theatre. The game is no shortage of other similar references and symbols that give it its character.
Magnus Failure has ambitions to deepen the player’s willingness to ask himself philosophical questions about who he is and what his place in the world is. Will you try to find answers to these questions and plunge into the mysterious world of Magnus Failure? Will you open up to the unknown and find the sender of the signal?
Mahjong Masters – £4.99
Mahjong Masters is a classic mahjong game with over 300 puzzle boards to solve. Match two of a kind to empty the whole board to progress to the next. Change background and tiles to your preferences and choose from a variety of backgrounds and tiles. Complete the daily challenges and have fun!
FORECLOSED – £14.99
Follow the story of Evan Kapnos, his identity recently Foreclosed, stripped of his job, his brain implants and his access to the city Block-chain, he must now escape before his identity and implants are auctioned off.
An Interactive Graphic Novel and Immersive Narrative
FORECLOSED combines the playability of video games with the sleek visual aesthetic of comic books. Everything from game-play to cinematics are experienced within the stylistic framework of a graphic novel. Full screen and comic panel perspectives are seamlessly blended as you move throughout FORECLOSED’s Cyberpunk city, uncovering a gripping conspiracy story. Cutscenes are also interactive and transition smoothly between alternative game-play styles.
Love Esquire – £19.99
In Love Esquire, you’re not a famous knight, but a good-for-nothing squire who’s on a quest to find a partner. Getting the girl won’t be easy though, since most of them are waaaay out of your league!
So raise those stats, battle monsters, and unleash your full potential!
Fire Tonight – £4.49
Maya and Devin are separated in a city on fire. In the year 1990, before cell phones or Internet. They’re on their own, wondering about the choices that brought them here, how they met, and what the future might hold.
Inspired by Information Society’s song of the same name, Fire Tonight is a lighthearted but thoughtful walk through the story of a relationship. A story about believing in each other when the whole world tries to keep them apart.
Fhtagn! – Tales of the Creeping Madness – £6.29
Play as one of four cultists intent on destroying the world by summoning an Ancient Horror.
Decide how you will be preparing for the final ritual by visiting various locations in the unsuspecting town of Arkham and navigating iconic Lovecraftian events.
Battle investigators, gangs, corrupt cops and horrors from the Depths to bring about the end of the world!
Tetragon – £13.49
Welcome to Tetragon – a vast mysterious universe of unique game mechanics, puzzles, magical mazes, and challenges!
Your goal is to move planes with a spinning world gravity . Using the power of TetraGen move the ground and the towers to guide the brave lumberjack Lucios through the scattered worlds and find his lost son!
The Plane Effect – £12.99
A time-and-mind bending adventure game…
It’s your final day at the office, it is time to clock out and return home – loomed over by a cosmic anomaly with an oppressive, otherworldly force. Helpless over the
cosmos, all you know is that you must return to your family, as soon as you can.
Find your way home by any means…
One Deck Dungeon – £7.59
Adventure calls… but you don’t always have time to spend hours optimizing your character sheet or managing your inventory! One Deck Dungeon lets you jump right in to bashing down doors, rolling dice, and squashing baddies with style. Get a full roguelike game experience, boiled down to its essence, and captured in a single deck of cards and a handful of dice!
Mary Kay Andrews: The Fixer Upper – £8.99
After her boss in a high-powered Washington public relations firm is caught in a political scandal, fledgling lobbyist Dempsey Jo Killebrew is left almost broke, unemployed, and homeless. Out of options, she reluctantly accepts her father’s offer to help refurbish Birdsong, the old family place he recently inherited in Guthrie, Georgia.
All it will take, he tells her, is a little paint and some TLC to turn the fading Victorian mansion into a real-estate cash cow.
Before long, what started as a job of necessity will somehow become a labour of love and, ultimately, a journey that takes her to a place she never expected, back home again.
Fort Triumph – £17.99
Fort Triumph is a challenging fantasy turn-based tactics game where permanent death is a possibility at any moment. How’s that for pressure?
Lead a band of heroes with different skill sets through a witty, parody fantasy plot. Missions with various objectives are waiting for you on tiled procedural maps—whether in story mode or skirmish, prepare yourself for a grand adventure.
Barry the Bunny – £4.99
Barry the Bunny is a challenging 2D platformer about a Bunny who likes carrots and loves building bridges!
Explore lush 2D landscapes, and help Barry walk, jump, collect or throw items to progress through each level. Barry will travel through 4 different worlds, defeating enemies, facing dangerous traps, conquering challenging platforming levels and getting enough wood to build new bridges!
Can Barry repair all the bridges so that the little bunnies can return home?
Hop into platform action fun with Barry the Bunny.
Whiskey Mafia: Frank’s Story – £5.39
It tells the story of Frank, a humble and unremarkable postman who dreams of living big time. He receives a letter from his old buddy Leo who was able to successfully survive the horrors of war. Leo proposes to open their own bar as the first business and the first step to a glorious future.
In all of a sudden, their plans go south as they have to deal with loan sharks, business rivals, bootleggers and other kinds of criminals. The duo has to fight off competitors, raid their warehouses and run things smoothly with their own bar. Do you have what it takes to deal with tension and become a bar owner during one of the hard times of NYC?
Scrap Garden – £6.29
Scrap Garden is an adorable family-friendly puzzle platformer. It tells a thrilling story of Canny, a lonely robot, who awakens in a post-robocalyptic world to find all the other robots shut down and seized up. In a moment our Canny is ready for the adventure to find some answers.
What happened to the City? Why did all robots stop moving? Did anyone survive except him? Who knows… But you’ll be able to learn the truth and try to fix it all with Scrap Garden finally available on consoles! Like someone said before: Scrap Garden may look a little dented, but its heart is definitely in the right place. And that’s what really matters.
.cat Milk – £8.99
This is a white little cat who loves to jump and to get into adventures around the town until he finds milk to drink. Once he accomplishes his mission, then it is time to go home. A fluffy white cat.
Cardaclysm: Shards of the Four – £11.99
You are a dark wizard who shouldn’t have tinkered with magic and spells way too powerful for you. But you did. And this time you messed up really bad: You’ve unleashed The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and their minions upon the World! Well done… So hurry, grab your magical cards and send them all back to their hellish dimension before the Apocalypse destroys everyone and everything – and much more importantly, before the old wizard council discovers what you have done…
Next week: Arietta of Spirits, Road 96, Volleyball Challenge, Greak: Memories of Azur, Pile Up! Box by Box, Rogue Explorer, Sakura Succubus 4, Mayhem Brawler, Zombo Buster Advance, Monster Train First Class, Buissons, Monster Harvest, Space Scavenger, Sudoku Classic, Adventure Field 4, and Where’s Samantha?