Nintendo’s Newest Line-Up Of Switch Indie Games Includes Promising Ports And A Cool-Looking Pool Game

A remastered version of the classic stealth game Mark of the Ninja headlined a quick video presentation of indie games coming to the Nintendo Switch this autumn, winter and spring. A bunch of cool-looking games were shown, but there were no shock announcements.

For Autumn:

• Garage, a gritty top-down shooter with VHS-inspired graphics, from Tiny Build. (“First” on Switch)
• Lumines Remastered, a port of the beloved musical falling-block game that confirms that yes, indeed, the Nintendo Switch is the true successor to the PSP (and PlayStation Vita), where Lumines initially thrived.
• Reigns King & Queens, a combo pack of both mobile Reigns games that are all about swiping through branching stories. They are very good, and we wouldn’t just be saying that because Kotaku alum Leigh Alexander wrote the second one.
• Light Fall, a tough-looking 2D platformer that lets you place a magical box mid-jump. (Timed console exclusive)
• West of Loathing, a comedic stick figure RPG that was all the rage on PC last year. (Console exclusive)
• Pode, a co-op exploration game from Henchman & Goon.

For Winter:

• Just Shapes And Beats, a musical bullet hell game from Berzerk Studio. (Timed console exclusive)
• Fantasy Strike, which is designed to be a more inviting 2D fighting game for genre newcomers.
• Bomb Chicken, a platformer featuring a chicken that lays bombs. (“First” on Switch)
• The Messenger, a 2D game that alternates from 8- to 16-bit. We liked it on PC.
• Bad North, a “rogue-lite, real-time strategy” game starring Vikings. (“First” on Switch)
• Banner Saga 3, the finale of the acclaimed RPG series. The first two Banner Sagas are also coming to Switch, release dates TBD.

For Spring:

• Mark of the Ninja Remastered, a new version of a stealth game we liked a lot when it launched in 2012.

‘Later this year’

• Pool Panic, a game from Rekim and Adult Swim that seems to turn all sorts of locales into giant games of pool. It was one of the best-looking games of the showcase.

Given the increasingly flood of less-than-amazing indies beginning to crowd out the good stuff on the Switch eShop, a list such as this hopefully helps. Indie games slip release dates as much as big corporate games do, so take the above release windows with salt.