An unexpected and possibly ground-breaking Switch 2 launch game

Survival Kids is: a) a surprise Konami revival, b) a game made by Unity (!?), and c) a showcase of a key Switch 2 innovation (!!)

Survival Kids. Screenshot: Unity, Konami

We are nearly at the 11th hour, ahead of the Switch 2’s debut later this week, and game producer Andy Dennison recently told me something about the launch game his team is making that shocked me.

It was Friday when we connected via a trans-Atlantic video call to discuss Survival Kids, the most head-scratching announcement from Nintendo’s April 2 Switch 2 showcase.

Survival Kids was the odd one out during that April 2 blow-out. It wasn’t a new Mario Kart, an expanded Zelda, nor a surprise Donkey Kong game. It wasn’t a port of Cyberpunk or Street Fighter or Fortnite. It was… well… what is it?

It is a game that, for surprising reasons, was developed by Unity, the company best known for making game engine tech, not games themselves.

It is some a co-op (or solo) shipwrecked-kids-surviving-on-tropical-islands adventure. And, oh right, “Survival Kids” is an old Konami franchise that started on the Game Boy Color in 1999 and came back as a series of Nintendo DS games under the name Lost In Blue, before even that revival passed out in 2008.

It is also one of the only original third-party games launching on Switch 2 on June 5.

If all that wasn’t distinct enough, there is this detail Dennison told me about the game:

• It isn’t simply that Survival Kids uses the Switch 2’s barely-promoted GameShare feature, a new local streaming option that is so key to the system that Nintendo dedicated one of the platform’s 10 main home screen icons to it.

• It isn’t just that Survival Kids uses GameShare to enable two players to play the game on two nearby Switch systems (at 60 frames per second)

• It’s that Survival Kids uses GameShare to enable co-op play, via one copy of the game, from one Switch 2 to two other nearby Switch systems (Switch 2s or original Switches), for three-player local co-op (at 30 frames per second)

Basically, on the eve of the Switch 2’s launch, I just discovered what might be the perfect Switch 2 game for me and my twins, if/when we get three Switch systems under one roof.

“I think it speaks to us trying to embrace what Nintendo are doing with the system, which is they're trying to be as social and as flexible as possible,” Dennison said to me.

And what a story Dennison had to share about how this game game to be (and how this Game Share stuff works)…