Nintendo debuted the latest Indie World Showcase around a week ago, a recurring video feature similar to their bigger Nintendo Direct segments that shows off games from small teams and solo devs. I’ve gathered up some of the new announcements and featured games that might be of interest to those looking for something cute and puzzly to play on their Switch. (Many of these games are coming to Steam, too.) Here’s the full Showcase, but you can skip below for a quick look at some of the thinky games on display:
The first game that caught my eye was Quilts and Cats of Calico, a digital adaptation of the popular 2020 tile-laying boardgame Calico. While the tabletop game can be quite a brain-burning spatial puzzle, one of its defining qualities is that it’s about very cute cats laying on quilts, so it makes sense to me that the new digital version is leaning on this cuteness factor. They even show off a full cat-customization screen to tailor the 3D felines to your liking. It’s pretty fun to think I could try to recreate my pets in-game… Quilts and Cats of Calico will feature both local and online play, including a ranked mode in case you’re particularly serious about kittens and blankets. The game is also coming to Steam when it launches this fall, with a demo available now.
Animal Well is a pretty hotly anticipated game from solo developer Billy Basso, gaining more attention in recent months when popular YouTuber Dunkey announced it would be one of the first titles presented by his new publishing venture BIGMODE. The game appears to fall somewhere on the broad metroidvania spectrum: a big, mysterious, non-linear platformer that promises many secrets and systemic interactions between items and environments. All the imagery we’ve seen from Animal Well so far oozes cryptic energy, from the shadowy blue and purple color palette to the eerie creatures and statues populating its world. I believe this Indie World Showcase was the first announcement of a release window for the game: “Early 2024.” Here’s hoping that finding our way through the labyrinthine world of Animal Well is as curiosity-driven and enigmatic as it looks to be.
I’m not sure exactly how thinky Crime O’ Clock will be, but the trailer shown off in the Showcase does advertise time-altering puzzles where changing events in one era can create ripple effects in others. You seem to be a timeline-hopping detective of some sort, searching through large illustrated maps to find crime-scene clues. With a game that looks to be narrative-driven, it’s not always clear just how much of a challenging puzzle will be present, but I do appreciate the Where’s Waldo influence in the presentation, continuing the trend of recent search-and-find games such as Hidden Folks and MicroMacro: Crime City.
Teslagrad 2 was released the same day the Showcase aired, along with a remastered version of the original Teslagrad. The series embraces the puzzle-platformer identity, with electricity-themed puzzles and powers intertwined with challenges of a more physical and action-oriented nature. I played the first game years ago and enjoyed its physics-based puzzles and big boss fights, all set in a hand-drawn European world of steam robots and electrical fields. The sequel seems to follow closely in the same vein, this time emphasizing a Nordic-influenced setting.
Towards the end of the Showcase there was a brief highlight of upcoming puzzle-adventure game Paper Trail mentioning an August release date. This one has been on my radar for a while and has picked up a few accolades: a contemplative tale with a charming art style set in a foldable world of paper levels that you manipulate around the protagonist, changing their shape and connecting new pathways. The variety present in the painting-like environments and the various puzzle mechanics that have been shown off suggest that this little game could potentially get quite deep and puzzly.
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