In a new interview Ember Labs has revealed that they originally tried to get the entertaining Kena: Bridge of Spirits up and running on the original Nintendo Switch. This was quite a challenge and ultimately it didn’t work out so the team jumped ship to the more powerful Nintendo Switch 2. Here’s what the company’s COO, Josh Grier, had to say about the challenges they faced.
“We did try to get it out on Switch 1. But trying to get on Switch 1, we would have had to really alter the artistic style of the game. We would have just really had to squeeze stuff. I think if we had developed a game from day one for the platform, we probably could have had a better chance.
“We got it close, but we thought it wasn’t worth it to have a lesser experience from a frame rate and performance perspective.”
“We couldn’t get the resolution there at the frame rate we wanted. And then when we did bump resolution, the frame rate was just… not great. There are some other more intense areas in the game where we’re doing a lot of things on the screen, and it just dips. And the platforming aspects, where we’re trying to make it feel really good and tight, that was a negative experience. It does exist on the server somewhere, though.”
Been wanting to get this for awhile, been on my Steam wishlist for years. Reminds me of those dime-a-dozen action platformers from PS2/GameCube days but modernized.
The game doesn’t look all that demanding unlike Doom 2016/Eternal, The Witcher 3 Sparking Zero, Kakarot, BotW/TotK and even Scarlet and Violet (minus the optimization issues and bugs). That being said, I would like to see how this turns out when it comes out.
It’s already out on the Nintendo Switch 2 and it runs beautifully. This game is far more demanding than Sparking Zero, Kakarot or Scarlet and Violet. On a graphical level it’s even more demanding than BOTW/TOTK