Runbow Pocket launches on June 20, 13AM Games working on new IP for Switch
It’s been a long time coming, but Runbow Pocket has a release date – and it’s due out very soon. The game is heading to 3DS on June 20. In North America, Runbow Pocket will be sold at retail and digitally while in Europe it will be an eShop-only title.
Here’s a trailer:
As for why Runbow Pocket took so long, 13AM Games’ Alex Rushdy explained:
“As part of our company culture, we don’t like keeping our fans in the dark as to why a game has been delayed or changed in some way since reveal, so I’d like to answer some of the questions that you guys might have about the game. It was a very difficult process to squeeze a large Wii U game into the New 3DS, especially when the engine it is built in is not our own. Being a pilot project for Unity New 3DS meant we had to face a cavalcade of technical difficulties, creating a new networking system, creating an e-commerce plug-in, figuring out how to maximize performance with significantly smaller CPU, GPU and memory compared to Wii U, and reorganizing all the UI and UX to work on the lower resolution dual screens.
Runbow Pocket has a built-in DLC shop. You can pick and choose the DLC add-on content however you like. We discussed including all DLC at a higher price download, but we wanted to give players the option to purchase only the DLC that they want, to keep cost down, while still allowing us to keep the same price structure as on Wii U. The Deluxe edition of Pocket from NightHawk includes not only all the DLC and a pretty retail box and cart, it also includes all four of the Nintendo 3DS HOME menu themes. So as a player you’ve got a choice to piece-meal the game on eShop or get it all in one big package at retail! The retail release is North America-only, however, but the game is coming to Europe as a download, of course.
The reason this stuff took so long was due to no one doing it before us. Luckily we had the support of Unity behind us, specifically Unity Games Japan, who assisted greatly in QA, tool development and overall engine support. We also had extensive support from Nintendo of America, especially Software Development Support Group. We are glad to have worked with the team behind the Unity engine and Nintendo of America to take on this ambitious project of bringing a native Unity game from Wii U to New Nintendo 3DS (and New 2DS XL!), something that was deemed impossible only a scant few years ago!
We especially wanted to make sure performance was strong across the game’s many, many single player levels. Given the portable nature of the game, most people will be playing by themselves on a commute or out in the world, so we made sure the game’s single player content runs at a smooth framerate (no small feat!). Being at the forefront of something means a lot of mistakes will be made and bugs will be found. So we missed our initial launch date estimates of late 2016 / early 2017 by a pretty wide margin. We also had to cut features such as StreetPass and local adhoc play in order to prioritize game performance and WiFi network play (up to 4 players), and finally get the game out. Certain engine features just weren’t ready early enough for us to complete the game feature associated with them. For this, we apologize deeply to our fans who were looking forward to these specific features.”
That’s not all from 13AM Games. The company has also revealed it is working on an entirely new project for Switch.
Rushdy teased:
“We can’t share many details yet, but we can assure you that it’s quite a different game from Runbow, but still distinctly “13AM.” It’s an action game, it’s single player, and it’s a bit… weird. Good weird, though. We look forward to sharing more details with you soon!”
