Author: sick skills

When they’re done well, games with a message can be so effective, balancing the scale between teaching and transfixing you. to a T is a narrative game wrapped in a cute art style courtesy of designer Keita Takahashi (Katamari). It touches on an important theme, but that touch is light.

Your happy-go-lucky character’s body is in a permanent ‘T’ pose, which makes you different to those around you – the game is largely about navigating a world made for people with mobile arms. That means you have a special toothbrush and spoon, plus a pooch who helps with your everyday tasks (later you get to play as them, adorable waddling animation included).

Chapters are divided by musical numbers like those in kids’ cartoons where you can sing along with karaoke-style animation for lyrics that are hilariously silly: ‘Y I B T shape, not U or F or O?’ The humour gets more tickling with your ability to spin rapidly and propel yourself into the air. It enables you to reach the highest heights – and your bullies’ hearts. Only you can do this, because only you are shaped like a T.

Our hero’s experience is clearly intended as a metaphor for disability, touching on everyday difficulties many take for granted. It’s great as a kid-friendly execution – quirky and creative yet empathy-drawing. However, the message gets muddled in the second half, where the story spirals wildly from weird to downright absurd.

And this is a world where unicycles talk and cereals contain wasabi. The ‘twist’ is odd, narratively speaking, but it also does a disservice to what could be a tidy theme about acceptance. Rather than making the protagonist relatable, it alienates them further.

The gameplay is mostly simulation, as you go through your character’s day-to-day life. Minigames trickle throughout, including rhythm games, maths problems and mazes. Some feel quite tricky – the maths numbers come at you full throttle, all over the screen. Any little ones playing may need help here.

It’s possible the minigames are intended to replicate the experience of a person with a disability. But, strangely, the game’s accessibility options are lacking. There’s one lone accessibility setting: instead of rotating your right joystick to spin and fly, you can press ‘R’.

On Switch 2, to a T is a bit jittery when you fly, or walk through small spaces. Camera movement is tied to your character; it changes angle as you move, so that ‘right’ turns into ‘up’ or ‘up’ becomes ‘down’.

to a T doesn’t do anything terribly, but it doesn’t exactly triumph either. Takahashi’s touch is evident in the cute 3D Peanuts-esque design. He and development studio uvula have taken on a tremendous challenge, though what they’ve produced could’ve had much more emotional resonance.

Most troublingly, it isn’t easily playable for the very audience it supposedly spotlights – and its story (while fun and quirky) may muddy its teachings. Still, littler players might enjoy its style and silliness, even if it doesn’t express its take-home message…to a T.

If you watched this week’s Nintendo Direct right from the very start, you will have seen a whopping two-minute-fifty-five-second trailer for next month’s first-party offering, Rhythm Heaven Groove. We’re rapidly closing in on that 2nd July release date, and today, the first previews have appeared online.

A bunch of outlets (including us) have had hands-on time with the long-awaited return of the rhythm series, so we can start to gauge what it has in store for us.

Here at Nintendo Life, we admitted that Groove is little more than more Rhythm Heaven, but that’s no bad thing. Here’s a snippet of our early thoughts, followed by the full preview:

There’s something oddly intoxicating about the sound design and visuals, coupled with the primal feel-good sensations that come from successfully adhering to a rhythm.

But what do other outlets have to say, eh? Below, we’ve rounded up a handful of them, so you can get an idea of the early consensus at a glance.

Over at Game Informer, the preview was optimistic about pretty much everything Groove has to offer:

I’m excited to see how the single-player offerings play out as you get deeper into them, and I look forward to busting this game out at future friend gatherings.

Pocket Tactics shared much of the same love, even to the new RPG ‘Beatspell’ mode — which, it admits, feels a little out of place despite its quality.

It wasn’t the most cohesive and did feel like I was playing a mostly separate game, but I like the ambition of it, and think that longtime fans of the series need crumbs of something else to chew on.

TechRadar‘s preview said that Groove is “on track to become my favourite Nintendo Switch release of 2026”. High praise indeed!

I can already see myself nipping back into its incredibly moreish beat-based minigames whenever I have a spare few minutes once it’s out.

The multiplayer mode got a particular shoutout in Metro‘s early thoughts:

Rhythm Paradise Groove is perhaps too low-key to ever be considered a Nintendo heavyweight, but for those clamouring for a light-hearted, cheap, absurdist cleanser to roll out at parties, this is shaping up to be a boon for the Switch’s multiplayer arsenal.

And finally, PC Mag praised the Beatspell mode’s uniqueness, hoping it’s enough to mix up the gameplay in the long run:

Since this was all rhythm-based, making those input choices in the moment while staying on beat felt like freestyling, a nice bit of creativity in a game otherwise about precisely following instructions.

So, just a small taste of the early impressions, but they seem rather positive! We’ll see what the full release holds when Rhythm Heaven Groove launches on Switch next month.

It has been another rough post-price-hike sales week for Switch 2 in Japan, but Nintendo stays winning on the software side, thanks to Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream (thanks, Famitsu).

The wacky life sim added another 50,000+ copies to its pile this week, stopping the new Switch 2 releases of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and eFootball Kick-Off! from getting the top spot. 007 First Light on PS5 has slipped from its silver-medal debut last week and now winds up in seventh, while Japan’s A-Train9 Evolution also makes the ranking in its debut week.

Here’s a look at the top ten in full:

It’s another week of small numbers on the hardware side of things, as Japan’s price hike has produced another drop in Switch 2 sales.

Nintendo’s latest remains on top, of course, with an additional ~23,000 sales to its name, but it’s down from last week’s 31,751, and don’t even get us started on the week before, where it hit a pre-price increase peak of 247,880.

We’ve seen similar drops for Switch 1 sales this week (apart from the Lite, which actually had a decent increase), and it’s reflected in the SKU totals. The Standard, Lite and OLED models come in at 7,821, while the three PS5 systems racked up 8,646.

Here’s a breakdown of the figures for the week:

< Previous charts

What do you make of this week’s charts? Let us know in the comments.

Earlier this year, Chained Echoes developer Matthias Linda announced that he was filing a lawsuit against distributor First Press Games after a two-year wait for his promised physical release. Well, good news! The dev has partnered with a new company, and the physical launch is back on track.

Super Rare Games has today announced that it is taking on the distribution mantle, with Standard and Deluxe Edition pre-orders arriving next week on 18th June at 6pm BST / 10am PT / 1am ET, before a planned ship in September. The company expects this to be a popular one, and is only promising it as a “limited pre-order release” for the time being.

Both editions include the base game and its accompanying ‘Ashes of Elrant’ DLC, while the Deluxe Edition also throws in a hardback A5 artbook, a poster, a gold coin, and an exclusive clamshell box to keep it all in.

This has been a long time coming for all those who backed the game on Kickstarter and have been expecting a physical copy in the years since. Linda has confirmed that “eligible Kickstarter backers who pledged for a physical copy will receive the game at no additional cost,” so keep an eye on those inboxes if this applies to you.

We’re excited to see this physical promise finally come into fruition, because this is a wonderful little game. “Chained Echoes is a wonderful mash-up of ’90s JRPG tropes,” we said in our 9/10 review, “masterfully woven together to produce an experience that feels simultaneously nostalgic and fresh.”

Let’s just hope that the release goes smoothly, this time.

Will you be picking up one of these physicals? Chain your thoughts in the comments below.

The Tomb Raider series is one of the longest-lasting in the video game industry, going all the way back to 1996. It has graced many different platforms, including Nintendo ones. And with the increased power of the Switch 2, lots of others are coming over too, including the recently released Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration.

But now, a new remake of the first game, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, is coming to Switch 2 next year. At Summer Game Fest 2026, I got to play about 40 minutes of the game and sit down with the developers to talk about bringing protagonist Lara Croft back to her roots.

To be clear, Lara Croft in Legacy of Atlantis is the same one from the Survivor trilogy (Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider). In this new sequel adventure, Lara is much more confident, bringing years of wisdom along with her.

“It’s a re-imagining of the debut adventure coming up on the 30th anniversary, we wanted to celebrate that moment,” said Crystal Dynamics experience director Jeff Adams. “We really wanted to make sure that she’s still bringing all of the experiences from the Survivor era.”

The connection may not be immediately apparent, given that the art style in Legacy of Atlantis is much more stylised than the gritty tone of the Survivor days. However, that was intentional.

We’re trying to meet Lara in this phase where she’s unfettered by the past. It’s a blue sky horizon ahead of her.

“Art direction is always talking about the emotions, so what we’re trying to do is invoke the emotions that people had when they played the original one, which is much more colourful,” Flying Wild Hog art director Arek Tomaszewski said.

Crystal Dynamics game director Raul Siqueira added, “The tone in Legacy of Atlantis is intended by design to be more optimistic. We’re trying to meet Lara in this phase where she’s unfettered by the past. It’s a blue sky horizon ahead of her. So she’s just having fun being the Tomb Raider at this time, and so we wanted the visual tone to reflect that.”

The elephant in the room, however, is that Legacy of the Tomb Raider used AI during the development process. Everyone’s opinions about AI vary, but personally, I didn’t detect anything that stood out to me as blatantly AI in my demo. That might be by design though, as Crystal Dynamics confirmed that AI-assisted assets were replaced by or refined by its human developers.

During the PC demo, I was in a jungle solving a puzzle where I had to find gears throughout the area and connect them to open up a gate. One thing that was noticeable was Lara’s jump, which was surprisingly far. When playing other AAA action games, the player character’s jump often doesn’t go very far, opting for more realism. But when I was playing as Lara here, I felt like I could cross any gap.

“It is important to us to stay faithful to the original, where acrobatics were part of her personality and how she moves, so we wanted to make sure that that was incorporated into it,” Siqueira said. “We wanted to show some sort of personality of Lara that is different from the Lara from [Survivor era], who was more grounded.”

Acrobatics is a huge part of combat now, too. Lara wields two pistols and she can backflip around dinosaurs while shooting at them. When landing shots, Lara builds up Focus, which she can then expend to activate a ‘bullet time’ mechanic and slow down time around her in a cool, cinematic flourish. It’s just another way to build out Lara’s personality.

“It’s also a fantastic example of what re-imagining means, because if you remember in Tomb Raider Anniversary, she did have the adrenaline dodge mechanic, where it did do a time dilation moment for a perfect headshot,” Adams explained. “That was the whole team basically saying, ‘Hey, that was a cool thing. How can we kind of make it feel more modern?’”

Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider franchise has spent the past three decades gracing our TV screens and handhelds. While 2027’s Tomb Raider: Catalyst (a sequel to 2008’s Tomb: Raider Underworld) hasn’t been announced for Switch 2, hopefully Legacy of Atlantis isn’t the end of her journey yet on Nintendo platforms.

“The fact that she can transcend decades, move through different genres and permutations is really what makes her such a defining figure in gaming,” Adams said. “You can make her work in almost every decade, whatever the paradigm is, because at the core of it, she’s just a really engaging character.”

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis launches on 12th February 2027 for Nintendo Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series, and PC.

If you can believe it, Date Everything is currently celebrating its first anniversary, and to mark the occasion, Team17 and Sassy Chap Games have released a new update to give players “the ultimate Date Everything experience”.

The ‘Self Care Update’ is rolling out on Switch today, addressing a bunch of community-flagged issues and feature requests that the dev has received in the last year. This includes a bunch of neat tweaks like player pronoun changes, new voice lines, a clearer HUD for screenshots and more. There have also been some changes based on sensitivity feedback from players, so the virtual dating can be as comfortable and welcoming as it was intended to be.

For those who missed this one on release, Date Everything is a sandbox dating sim where you can date… everything. Inanimate objects? Dateable. Existential concepts? Dateable. In-game bugs and glitches? Dateable. The best part is that all of these hopeless romantics are voiced by some of the biggest names in the VA biz, with Troy Baker, Matt Mercer, Ali Hillis, Ben Starr (and just about everyone else you can think of) on board.

Here’s a rundown of all the changes included in this update, provided by Team17:

• Content Aware Support for Hector, Friar Errol, and Farya

• Updated Content Aware Descriptions: Based on player feedback, each existing Content Aware has additional detail and updated language

• Subtitles for Songs and Musical Pieces for Hearing-Impaired: Miranda, Bodhi, and Keyes will display lyrics and descriptions during their most musical moments.

• Curt and Rod Player Pronouns: We brought in Davied and Jacquis into the studio for new lines that address the player with correct pronouns!

• Daisuke/Gaia Interaction: We brought Daisuke (Tsuji) into the studio for special Traveller dialogue with Gaia!

• Community Sourced Sensitivity Feedback These are almost too numerous to name, but we thank players for giving us the feedback to make these changes for better player character options!

• More sensitive player choices in general for: Farya, Arma, I, Ronaldini, Freddy, Mitchell, Maggie, Scandalabra, Stefan, Stepford, Teddy, and Zoey

Will you be checking out Date Everything’s latest update? Let us know in the comments.

To some, the concept of Rhythm Paradise (or Rhythm Heaven as it likes to be called) is a bit of a hard sell. It’s a rhythm game with the most simplistic controls imaginable, often just a single button, coupled with some simple animations to go along with it.

I don’t blame anyone for being a bit sceptical, to be honest, and in truth I’ve never sat down and played a game in the series before having a go at Rhythm Paradise Groove at Nintendo’s UK headquarters, but the devil (or perhaps angel) really is in the detail.

I got to try out a handful of the single-player games, two of the multiplayer offerings, and the only somewhat promoted new mode, Beatspell, which featured in the most recent Nintendo Direct, although strangely not by name.

The single-player content is as I described above. Very simple inputs are required to be pressed in time to a beat, with some music and charming little animations to go alongside it. In isolation, not one of the games is anything exceptional; the timing windows are fairly small, so you’re unlikely to get a perfect score first time around, but it’s hard to escape the fact that beyond the odd syncopated rhythm, you’re pressing the same button (or buttons) for a few minutes at a time with limited variety.

Yet I had difficulty getting bored with most of them, except perhaps the one where you have to make a dog jump and catch a frisbee. There’s something oddly intoxicating about the sound design and visuals, coupled with the primal feel-good sensations that come from successfully adhering to a rhythm.

But where things really came to a head was the Remix, where each of the games I’d already played were swapped between unpredictably, requiring me to interact with them in a much more engaging and different manner, forcing myself to really keep track of all the timings required. Lovely stuff.

Multiplayer was a bit more straightforward, but having more than one person involved added more of a dynamic than I expected. One game was co-op, where we had to protect the king’s carriage from incoming arrows. The timing on this was brutal, and I’m reluctant to admit that through my clumsy efforts, the king was swiftly dispatched and we all failed the game. We won later, but I barely improved. I blame the TV’s input lag.

The other was a simple affair of waiting until exactly three o’clock in the afternoon (in-game time, thankfully – I didn’t really want to risk hitting rush hour) to grab a slice of cake. Whoever presses ‘A’ closest to that time wins, and their hair grows to establish dominance.

Both games are devilishly simple, but strangely compulsive. Perhaps it’s the context of having to wait until a specific time to grab a mid-afternoon treat, or maybe it’s my sheer competitiveness, but I found myself disappointed when we had to move on.

But what a thing to move on to! Beatspell is a sort of RPG reminiscent of the likes of Streetpass Quest in how its levels are presented. You cast spells to damage foes and recover health, and…well, I don’t know because I was only allowed to play the first two levels, and they were the only spells I got.

You cast them by pressing buttons in time to the beat, in a gameplay departure some may describe as ‘bold’. Yeah, it’s arguably the same buttons yet again, but aren’t all games just pressing buttons?

Anyway, the better your timing with these spells, the more damage you deal, or health you recover. I never fought more than one enemy at any one time, and once I’d found a technique that worked, there wasn’t any real challenge at all, but the ideas it presented really intrigued me.

I’m still wondering how expansive this mode is; I’m not saying it needs to be 30 hours long — in fact, I think I’d lose my mind if it was — but I am still hoping that there’s a good few hours to be had in this mode, because it’s just as strangely engaging as the other modes, perhaps even moreso.

But the rub of all of this is, will it stand up as a full package? My gut tells me it will, although some people will certainly draw unfavourable opinions for not having more than it does. The real proof will be in the final game, but until we get a proper look at everything it has to offer, I think fans can remain cautiously optimistic. I know I am, and I’ve only been a fan for a few weeks.

Rhythm Heaven Groove releases on 2nd July.