It lives! After nearly a year of radio silence and over a year after its original release window, we finally have some good news on the front concerning Pocket Rumble‘s Switch port. In a video update on the developer’s YouTube channel, Christian Stewart from Cardboard Robot Games has announced that the Switch port of Pocket Rumble will be releasing before the end of July.
Here’s what Stewart had to say, in part:
“The biggest reason for the development delays and the lack of communication is that we have encountered a bunch of unexpected problems with the Nintendo Switch port, both in terms of platform approval as well as some online net code issues which have eaten up a lot of time. We’re a super small team with day jobs, so we dedicated almost all of our resources to the port until the problems were resolved before we could put any more work into the game itself or develop any more content.”
As a gesture of goodwill, Cardboard Robot Games via publisher Chucklefish will be distributing Switch codes of the game to Kickstarter backers who already own the Steam version at no additional charge. Furthermore, the Steam version will stay in early access after the Switch version’s full release and will gradually receive content updates. Once all updates and additions to the Steam version have been made, the Steam version will exit early access and the Switch version will receive a massive update to match.
Pocket Rumble will also be coming to Nintendo Switch in Japan, which Stewart notes they “quietly announced at BitSummit.”
While I do think it wasn’t a very good look for neither Cardboard Robot Games nor Chucklefish to remain so quiet about Pocket Rumble over the last year, I’m glad to see it’s still alive and kicking and that we should be seeing this game very soon. Be sure to check out the full developer update video below.
