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…
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s Stranded mission had me hooked for hours, yet left me wanting more
I spent hours sneaking through North Korea, scavenging supplies, and clearing outposts, and I’d happily do it all again.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Stranded mission gameplay

For years, Call of Duty’s campaign mode has used big, scripted set pieces to tell the overarching story amid all the adrenaline-pumping action. The 2023 Modern Warfare 3 tried to shake up the established formula by introducing a handful of short open combat missions, and I genuinely liked the idea, but the game's overall negative reception seeped into how those missions were received.

I feared the next iteration might abandon the idea because of the backlash, but I am glad it didn't. MW4’s “Stranded” mission uses the same approach, but instead of fragmenting it across the campaign, it puts it all in a single large-scale open-world mission.

Read more
The $1300 Acer Predator Atlas 8 handheld is finally US-bound, and its pre-orders are already sold out
Acer’s first gaming handheld to launch in the US arrives November 1 with Intel Arc G3 Extreme hardware.
Intel Arc G3 Extreme Hands On with Acer Predator Atlas 8

Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.

Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.

Read more
ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2026) Review: Almost everything I want from a gaming laptop, except the price
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop

Quick Take

Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.

Read more