Metroidvania Platformer Outbuddies Announced For Nintendo Switch

Publisher Headup Games and developer Julian Laufer today announced that the Metroidvania platformer Outbuddies is coming to Nintendo Switch in 2020.

Outbuddies is a classic Metroidvania exploration game including local co-op elements. After its Kickstarter campaign in 2017, German solo developer Julian Laufer created an intriguing adventure about the Old Gods, strange creatures and the remnants of a lost world.

Players will experience real non-linear Metroidvania gameplay and uncover five distinct areas, all with remarkable puzzles, environmental hazards, epic boss encounters and captured Wozan to uncage. The helpful Buddy unit will procedurally map the area and function as a handy quality of life tool that can be controlled at will to manipulate your surroundings using various abilities like hacking, scanning, and telekinesis.

Outbuddies features a highly skill- and mechanics-based progression system, both in terms of combat and platforming abilities. Each of the game’s four upgradable weapon systems is also an essential survival tool, that has to be chosen wisely in order to stand a chance against Bahlam’s various traps and unforgiving foes. Bosses were designed to live up to genre highlights such as Dead Cells, Dark Souls and Hollow Knight and will require split-second reflexes and profound memorization of attack patterns to stand a chance.

The local co-op option invites a second player to explore and experience Outbuddies together by taking control over the invincible “Buddy” unit. Support each other on your journey home, solve puzzles and overcome Bahlam’s hostile maze. This will also provide an opportunity for team-speedrunning as a very unique take on the scene.

About the game

Enter Bahlam, a sunken city of the Old Gods, located deep in the South Atlantic Ocean. Following a shipwreck, adventurer and maritime archaeologist Nikolay Bernstein regains consciousness 36.000 feet under the sea. He’s severely wounded and unwillingly connected to a supernatural Buddy-unit. Searching for answers about his displacement our main protagonist digs deep into the lost Undercity, gradually realizing an ominous presence hollowing in its shadowed caverns.

On your journey home you will share your fate with a friendly tribe of mining creatures, the Wozan, who fear the Old Gods and strive to get back to the surface since their ancestors had been enslaved 5000 years ago. Some of them were able to flee and founded secret colonies deep inside the sunken ruins, others are still exploited by the hostile creatures that have overtaken the city since the Old Gods suddenly disappeared.

Features

• Explore an open vibrant fantasy world
• Real Metroidvania gameplay with lots of gear, puzzles and Easter eggs
• Unique dual-hero scheme with local co-op support
• Epic boss battles & believable enemy AIs
• Intriguing narrative and memorable characters
• High freedom of movement at 60 FPS
• Handcrafted pixel art with distortion-free scaling to your native display resolution
• Support for various input devices & key rebinding
• Original soundtrack by OGRE music

Check out the Outbuddies Announcement Trailer: