How’s about that Nintendo Direct, eh? It was almost akin to a mini E3 conference. While there’s plenty to look forward to – indeed, it seems Nintendo is in no rush whatsoever to reveal a Switch successor – this week’s eShop round-up brings us back to the here and now.
Firstly, a trio of surprise announcements are now available. The brilliantly named Easy Come Easy Golf comes from Clap Handz, creators of the Everybody’s Golf series. The Japanese studio is renowned for having strong ties with Sony, so to see the Switch gain an exclusive is a reasonably big deal. Online tournaments, private matches, and lots of unlockable characters and outfits are the order of the day.

Then from Treasure and Live Wire comes Radiant Silvergun, one of the finest vertical shooters of all time. The Saturn version is known for costing a hefty sum – around £200 appears to be the current rate. It’s also a game that hasn’t seen a great deal of re-releases – the last was on Xbox 360. Even if you aren’t the biggest fan of genre, we encourage you to give it a try.
Various Daylife comes from Square-Enix, meanwhile, being an Apple Arcade conversion. The development team behind Octopath Traveller and Triangle Strategy are responsible, hence the similar visuals and presentation. It’s also coming to PS4 at the end of the week, incidentally.
Square-Enix are also behind Voice of Cards: The Beasts of Burden. We’ve certainly known a few beasts of burden in our time. The two previous games in the series were well received, and it’s doubtful this will break that trend. As the name suggests, it’s an RPG played entirely through cards. Only here, it’s possible to trap beasts and harness their powers.

This week also brings us the reworked version of XIII – with a new developer in tow – the laid-back B&B management sim Bear & Breakfast, a late conversion of the Dungeon Keeper spiritual successor Dungeon 3, and an equally belated release of the 2.5D action platformer Little Orpheus.
Reviews of Little Orpheus are starting to surface, including a 7.5 from Pure Nintendo (“The sense of wonder does slowly wear off, but it’s a quick, casual adventure worth completing”) and a lukewarm 6/10 from Nintendo Life who also felt it lack lasting power.
Also look out for the tiny 2D scrolling brawler Last Beat Enhanced, pixel art adventure The Dark Prophecy, the delightfully warped tactical battler Despot’s Game: Dystopian Army Builder, and Blind Fate: Edo No Yami – a slick-looking hack ‘n slasher with robotic folklore creatures.
New Switch eShop releases

XIII is a remake of the cult first-person action game that was initially released in 2003. You play as “XIII”, a man without an identity, in a solo campaign with numerous twists and turns. Inspired by the eponymous graphic novel, the game features a completely reinvented and unique cel-shading design. In XIII, players can also take part in fierce multi-player fights.
The country remains in a state of shock following the assassination of President Sheridan. You wake up, wounded and with amnesia, on a deserted beach on the east coast. The only clues as to your identity are a tattoo of the number XIII near your collarbone and a locker key. Even though your memory is failing, you discover that you have the reflexes of a highly trained professional fighter. You set off in search of your past, discovering that you played a role in the murder of the President of the United States of America, and revealing the most astounding conspiracy ever hatched in the country’s history.
Voice of Cards: The Beasts of Burden – £24.99
This is the tale of a girl who swears revenge on monsters.
After losing her home, she joins hands with a mysterious boy and sets out into the unknown.
But will it be the light of hope, or the darkness of despair that awaits them at journey’s end…?
The Voice of Cards series are RPGs, told entirely through the medium of cards.
In “The Beasts of Burden”, you can trap the monsters you defeat in cards and use them as skills in battle.
Enjoy a truly unique gaming experience from the minds of YOKO TARO, Keiichi Okabe and Kimihiko Fujisaka.
Beloved golf-game developer Clap Hanz’ latest work makes its Nintendo Switch debut!
Play with friends, family, people from all over the world, or take it easy and golf on your own! Earn new characters, costumes, and courses as you play rounds in the main mode, Tour Mode. Track your growth by improving your Best Score on each course!
Hop online and participate in a World Tournament or Online Match. World Tournaments with set rules are hosted weekly, and players worldwide pull out all the stops to see who has the top score! Play rounds with players from all over the world, hassle-free, in Online Match. If private affairs are more up your alley, create password-protected rooms to jump on the course with friends!
Join our bold yet hapless hero Comrade Ivan Ivanovich as he explores lost civilizations, undersea kingdoms, prehistoric jungles and lands beyond imagination. Gasp as he battles the subhuman tribe of the Menkv and escapes the clutches of dreadful monsters! Cheer as he triumphs over impossible odds and untold dangers in the subterranean worlds!
With stunning visuals, brilliant acting and a world-class score, Little Orpheus is a subterranean epic you’ll never forget. Comrades, to the center!
Bear and Breakfast is a laid-back management adventure game where you play as a well-meaning bear trying to run a B+B in the woods. Hank and his friends find an abandoned shack and, equipped with their teenage ingenuity, turn it into a money-making bed and breakfast scheme for unsuspecting tourists. As your business expands so do the mysteries of the forest, and Hank soon finds himself uncovering a plot deeper than the wilderness itself.
Svoboda 1945: Liberation – £16.50
Svoboda 1945: Liberation is a game full of rare historical material, footage, and memorabilia for you to explore. The game is a follow-up to the award-winning Attentat 1942. It was written in cooperation with a team of professional historians.
Travel through the world, meet new people & complete little quests for the people you meet. Can you reach Sacred Valley’s heart?
Stages with various topography such as intricate gaps and moving containers become battlefields, and enemies attack from all directions, up, down, left and right. 23 bosses await beyond… Six highly challenging stages await you.
There is a chain bonus that keeps increasing the score by continuously defeating the same enemy, a secret bonus generated by defeating enemies in a specific order, and a hidden score item. The key to earning a score is to cover all of these, build an original pattern for strategy, and accurately defeat the target enemy.
Use different weapons that level up by earning points and beat the high score!
Dead Invaders: Modern War 3D – £5.99
Grab your guns and grenades and fight to the last alien!
An all-new ‘Adventure X Daily Life’ RPG from SQUARE ENIX, created by the development team that worked on OCTOPATH TRAVELER and BRAVELY DEFAULT.
In the year 211 of the Imperial Era, a new continent was discovered. Explore its every last corner as a settler of Antoecia, while living your life to the fullest in the city of Erebia.
Accompany Cheri on her first mission in REKNUM DX, an upgraded version of the original Reknum exclusive to this edition. It includes new character sprites, a fully remastered HD HUD and world, new mechanics, and an extended story to explain her connection to the PLOIDS and the end of the adventure.
Family Man is a dark, story-led RPG that asks the question: When pushed to the limits of your own morality, how far would you go for the sake of your family?
You owe money to the mob, and you’ve got three weeks to pay it back. Will you flip burgers and earn an honest living while scraping the money together… or will you take on some dirty jobs for more cash, but potentially push your family away?
Every decision you make affects everyone around you. The neighbourhood will blossom or perish under the weight of your decisions, while the path you choose may lead to your household becoming stronger than ever… or the breakdown of your marriage and relationship with your child.
Queen’s Garden – Sakura Season – £16.19
It’s Sakura Season in Japan and the Queen decided to celebrate! Help Queen Ayame and the loyal minister Haruo decorate this exotic Japanese garden in this unique match-3 game! Play over 119 levels, collect coins and special jewels, purchase plants and decorations to design the most beautiful garden in Japan!
Loot Box Simulator – RPG Anime Girls – £2.99
Live your life like there is no tomorrow.
Earn money by finishing crazy jobs from a random selection, just to spend all of it on loot boxes.
“Loot Box Simulator – RPG Anime Girls” brings pretty anime girls and exciting loot boxes to your console. Choose between 4 action options and win great collectible pictures of the cutest anime girls.
It’s the summer of 1978, and Casey Beaumaris is trying to make the most of her holidays, when her mum asks her to spend a long weekend helping out at the airborne hospital where she works.
Casey prefers the company of books to people, but she agrees, secretly planning to write an article about her visit for the school newspaper.
With her trusty notebook at the ready, Casey arrives on board the airship. The staff are overworked as they prepare for the visit of an important official, while the patients react to grief, or deal with active trauma.
In the midst of these and many other interlocking and overlapping stories, Casey spends time with the patients, learning about their lives, and, as the stories unfold, discovering what she can do to help.
Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy – £19.49
Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy is a charming, turn-based RPG adventure that puts a modern spin on classic tactics-style games. Featuring a diverse cast of characters, enormous boss monsters, and a dark world embroiled in war, Absolute Tactics plunges players right into the action as our hero Huxley and his dog Max build their team of allies to defend their home against a mysterious invading army.
Control your units and make use of their unique traits to dominate your enemies with masterful strategies that take advantage of unit placement, varied attack patterns, and skills that are as unique as each character. A vast array of deadly enemies, traps, puzzles and obstacles await to challenge you on your adventure.
Vanquish the Mad Stroke gangs across 8 levels! Punch and kick your way to defeat enemies, use melee and throwing weapons to defeat the most powerful bosses, collect bonuses and enjoy special shots. Race your motorbike at full speed in the bonus stages, earn money to unlock additional characters and secret images from a rich gallery! Don’t be discouraged if you are defeated, you can purchase upgrades to throw yourself into the fray with a little advantage. Complete the game with all the characters to know the endings and have fun with a friend to discover the combined ones! For the bravest, increase the difficulty level and if that’s still not enough, wipe out all the enemies in a row in the fearsome Ring mode and prove you’re the best of them all.
Dungeons 3 – Nintendo Switch Edition – £35.99
At last, the Dungeon Lord has successfully united the forces of evil and established his dark empire. Time for the next step in his most diabolical quest: expansion!
Unleash your dark side by creating a unique underground dungeon from a huge array of rooms, traps and structures. Raise the most terrifying army the world has ever seen, by choosing from despicable creatures such as orcs, succubae, zombies and much, much more. Then, once you have built your forces, emerge from the darkness and guide your army to the light of the overworld, where you will corrupt the land and dispatch anything even vaguely heroic, cute or unicorn-shaped.
Compete against friends or robots in local 4-player party chaos! Defend yourself against magical balls in hectic levels to win the prized cup crown.
You do not keep any recollection of the things you were able to do before, but you will be able to recall them through observation and to do them again. For example, you can jump after watching a monkey doing so or swing a sword after watching someone using it during a fight.
Silent Sector takes us to a remote part of the galaxy where several factions fight each other over the profits in a new gold rush – in pursuit of an extraordinarily valuable mineral called Eldorite.
Our hero comes into this Wild West universe and very quickly loses both their ship and cargo. You must find a way to repay the debt and take your revenge against Admiral Zed. This truly miserable corner of the universe offers you a chance to try your luck at becoming a successful merchant, rich miner, feared mercenary or a famous adventurer.
Japanese Escape Games The Mansion of Tricks – £7.49
The 9th Japanese Escape Games series!!
Game system
This game is an escape-the-room game (mystery-adventure game).
*Point the screen with a cursor to solve riddles, and this game goes on.
Discover the wild planet Ankora and explore freely around this mysterious world full of promise and danger. Craft different tools, build structures and terraform yourself a new home in this cute-as-heck survival game.
Mûn is a Junior Ranger from the Interstellar Patrol, stranded on the unexplored planet Ankora after her spaceship crashes there. Mûn will need to craft her own tools to collect the necessary resources for her adventure, overcoming many obstacles: rivers, lakes, waterfalls, mountains… and monsters.
Ankora is a huge place. Explore freely around this mysterious planet full of promises and danger. Create different tools, build structures and terraform yourself a new home in the wild.
Use the hammer to build structures, the shovel to dig and modify the terrain and the bow to defend yourself!
Saomi is a little adventurer who likes challenges and exploring new places. In this adventure, Saomi sets out in search of a very rare diamond that was lost in an old family treasure.
During the adventure, Saomi will run, jump through obstacles, use the double jump to jump through even bigger obstacles, use her air thrust skill to dodge traps, jump and slide along walls and much more in search of lost treasure.
– Earn billions with your Cthulhu pub!
The course of each accident consists of several stages and possibilities:
Providing assistance to accident victims. It is necessary to check the condition of accident victims and help those who need it most. Every accident is different so it is necessary to assess the situation quickly. This can include stopping the bleeding, performing CPR, and putting the victims in a safe position.
After the rescue operation and secure accident area, discover the reasons of the tragedy.
Unichrome: A 1-Bit Unicorn Adventure – £13.49
Relive the glory of the retro console era in the spirit of the classic Atari while experiencing heart-pounding platforming and shoot ’em up action. Prepare for an arcade delight with tight controls, refreshing game mechanics, cracking retro art and an addictive soundtrack.
Kitten’s Head Football – £6.99
This is exactly what you think, football with kittens, but not just that.
It’s not just a game about cutie kittens, they are real players, and you have to deal with them, because when these paws are on stadium – passion comes into play.
Aren’t you scared? So you are brave enough to deal with kitten-shark or kitten-vampire? Yes, that’s right. There are many skins here you can unlock if you win!
Is it easy for you? Ok, but what about power-ups? Kittens can use them to freeze you or change your size. But don’t worry, you can use power-ups too.
You can also show friends your skills. Play locally with skins unlocked before. Create your own match and chill out!
Plunder Panic is a swashbuckling action–arcade game for up to 12 players where two rival crews battle for supremacy on the high seas! Featuring both local and online play, work with your crew to plunder booty, defeat the enemy captain, or scuttle their ship. The first team to capture an objective wins, so be on the lookout for other sneaky pirates!
Raise the Jolly Roger and dive into this blend of classic and modern games, where retro graphics and simple controls meet fast-paced, frantic arcade action. With multiple play modes, unique power-ups and game changing modify-arrs, there are hundreds of gameplay combinations guaranteed to shiver ye timbers! Plunder Panic features flexible team configurations, including local, online, and AI-controlled players. It’s time to assemble your crew, get all hands on deck, and send your scurvy competition to Davy Jones’ Locker!
Play as Jacob, an average medieval boy, on his quest to save the kingdom from cataclysmic witchcraft.
Soon Jacob finds himself amid a whirlpool of magical events. Now the fate of his village (and whole kingdom) depends on him.
Explore a vibrant world and find puzzle solutions to move the plot forward, discover unique items and mystical locations, and enjoy a beautiful pixel-art aesthetic.
Brutal Chase Turbo is an arcade racer inspired by the classic late 80s cop chasing games. Get into your police car and ram your enemies until they give up!
Cold autumn wind was blowing into my mind. It was enjoying sounds of deep forest and a terry surface of a lake. That place couldn’t be real. That was a fantasy, a fantasy designed to the smallest detail. An intermittent scream was carried by thunder over the trees. Someone was drowning…
Despot’s Game: Dystopian Army Builder
A group of people wake up in a strange post-apocalyptic labyrinth – naked, with no memories and with a bunch of weapons. Is this a joke, a crazy experiment, or… a game? You’ll find out soon enough, just try not to die first!
Choose your loot and transform the squishy humans into wizards, cultists, ninjas and dozens of other heroes, including the mythical stale pretzel throwers. With perks and class combos, there are thousands of ways to build your army. The man-eating cabbage will appreciate the variety in its diet!
Blind Fate: Edo No Yami
It’s a new, dark and machine-filled Edo period, and the Shogunate rules over Japan with its just, but pitiless hand: you. You follow orders. You obey. You kill. Until your sight is taken from you, and you must learn to “feel” the world anew… Dive into a world that mixes Sci-Fi and ancient tradition. Slash through robots with a trusty katana, use hi-tech implants to navigate the surroundings, dodge enemy attacks, and land devastating finishers. Reclaim the past following the way of the Japanese samurai in the fantastic period of New Edo.

Next week: Return to Monkey Island, The DioField Chronicle, Shovel Knight Dig, No Place for Bravery, Wylde Flowers, Beacon Pines, Piofiore: Episodio 1926, OneShot: World Machine Edition, BIRFIA, Potion Permit, Camped Out!, Puzzle Battler! Mirai, SpiderHeck, SongPop Party, DreamWorks Dragons: Legends of The Nine Realms, Amnesia: Memories, Jack Move, and Afterlove EP.