Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

‘Tumbleseed’ is a promising new indie rolling to the Nintendo Switch

Add as a preferred source on Google

The Nintendo Switch is a great success, making history as Nintendo’s fastest-selling console ever. Now what the system needs most is more games and to that end in rolls Tumbleseed. Dubbed a “rolly roguelike,” Tumbleseed will arrive on Nintendo Switch, as well as the PlayStation 4 and Windows/MacOS, on May 2.

Tumbleseed is like a souped-up version of the classic game Ice Cold Beer, which you may or may not have seen in a local retro arcade. Ice Cold Beer is more of a mechanical game than a video game, tasking players with balancing a steel ball on rollers and moving it upward while avoiding crisscrossing holes. Tumbleseed works similarly, but with endlessly generated levels, fancy power-ups, a bangin’ soundtrack, and a gorgeous indie art style. It features five worlds, more than 30 different powers, daily challenges, and more, according to the game’s official site.

Recommended Videos

The game will take advantage of the Nintendo Switch’s touted HD rumble features, according to Nintendo’s official listing for it, and you can even play with a friend on Switch when each player holds one of the Joy-Con controllers.

Developer Team Tumbleseed includes Greg Wohlwend of Threes! and Ridiculous Fishing fame, which is quite a pedigree in the world of indie games. The team also includes composer and sound designer Joel Corelitz, whose previous work includes the excellent The Unfinished Swan and Hohokum. They haven’t announced a price yet for Tumbleseed‘s May 2 release.

Nintendo Switch could use more indie games while we wait for Nintendo’s bigger releases, like Splatoon 2 and Super Mario Odyssey, to arrive later in 2017. In the meantime, reports in March indicated that Nintendo may be doubling down on Switch production to attempt to keep up with demand.

If only it would have done the same for the poor, discontinued NES Mini.

Michael Rougeau
Former Contributor
Mike Rougeau is a journalist and writer who lives in Los Angeles with his girlfriend and two dogs. He specializes in video…
Epic is throwing $50,000 for vibe-code games. What could possibly go wrong?
Epic is rewarding vibe-coded games with real money
Epic MegaJam 2026

Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.

Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”

Read more
Monster Hunter Outlanders arrives on Android and iOS next week with four-player co-op
The free-to-play spin-off launches October 29 with open-world exploration, mobile-focused combat, and a building system.
Monster Hunter Outlanders poster

It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.

Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.

Read more
Phantom Blade Zero makes me think Sony might have a point about going all digital
Physical games still matter, but when the disc isn't a complete copy of the game, the argument for keeping it becomes harder to make.
Phantom Blade Zero Featured Image

I'm a big supporter of physical games. There's something satisfying about owning a disc, lending it to a friend, or grabbing a bargain without waiting for a digital storefront to approve the price. But Phantom Blade Zero has me questioning one of the biggest arguments in the physical-versus-digital debate. The game's digital version launches on October 29, 2026, while its physical PS5 editions, including Standard, Deluxe, and Ultimate versions, won't arrive until 2027.

And there's another wrinkle: the digital version reportedly needs up to 134GB of storage, raising questions about how much of the game can actually fit on a standard Blu-ray disc. A standard PS5 Ultra HD Blu-ray disc maxes out at 100GB, so Phantom Blade Zero may need to ship across multiple discs or require players to download additional data to finish installing it. Either way, the idea of popping in a disc and having the complete game ready to play gets a little murkier.

Read more