DeNA’s first Nintendo-licensed mobile game will launch this year

By Danny Cowan Updated July 9, 2015

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Nintendo’s first officially licensed mobile game will premiere by the end of this year, with four additional titles expected to launch by April of 2017, DeNA West CEO Shintaro Asako confirmed at this week’s Pocket Gamer Connects event in San Francisco.

The five games will each be based on different Nintendo properties, and DeNA hopes to explore multiple genres across its initial slate of releases.

“We want to make sure out of those five IP that we can end up attracting hundreds of millions of people,” Asako told Pocket Gamer.

Asako highlights the differences in how both companies approach game development, and notes that a combination of Nintendo’s and DeNA’s expertise has the potential to “completely change the market.”

“Nintendo has by far the best gaming IP,” Asako explained. “DeNA’s expertise is definitely backend.”

Asako cites Glu’s Kim Kardashian: Hollywood as a successful mobile release resulting from a strong partnership, and hopes to replicate the same degree of success between DeNA and Nintendo.

DeNA’s past partnerships have produced licensed mobile games based on Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney properties, though Asako describes Nintendo’s ongoing licensing agreement as “the most crucial partnership” for the company to date.

Licensing corporation The Pokemon Company has produced several Pokemon-themed apps for iOS devices, including the upcoming free-to-play puzzler Pokemon Shuffle. Nintendo and DeNA’s partnership is part of a separate licensing agreement.

Nintendo has not named the properties it plans to license for DeNA’s mobile apps, and a specific release date for the company’s first mobile game is not yet known.

There is no word yet on what those five Nintendo franchises will be. Mario seems like a no-brainer, and Zelda is also likely. Beyond that it’s anyone’s guess. Metroid, Donkey Kong, Star Fox, Kid Icarus — what IP would you like to see?

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Marvel Snap’s Friendly Battles set a new bar for its post-launch support

marvel snap friendly battle mode impressions key art

I’ve been hooked on Marvel Snap ever since I gained access to its beta in May 2022. The core, fast-paced gameplay has allowed the card game to sustain itself on just one match type and very few game-changing updates outside of the Token Shop. That feeling probably won’t last forever, though. If Second Dinner wants to keep the Marvel game relevant after a strong launch period, it needs to keep expanding and spicing it up in exciting new ways. The new Friendly Battle is a solid first step for that.
MARVEL SNAP's NEWEST Feature | BATTLE MODE | Play With Friends Now!
Marvel Snap’s developers teased a Friendly Battle mode that allows players to create private games with friends for a long time. The mode finally arrived on January 31 and lived up to expectations. In fact, playing it whetted my appetite for the future of Marvel Snap as I think about how the game could expand and improve with more social systems and modes to keep players coming back for years to come.
The strengths of Friendly Battle mode
Marvel Snap’s Friendly Battle mode utilizes the same six turn, location, and card ability-based formula Digital Trends has praised thoroughly. What’s different is the length of the fights and who you can compete against. Typically, matchmaking is random, but Friendly Battle allows players to Create and Join matches via a generated Match Code. This means there is finally an easy way to play Marvel Snap with your friends, showing off your deck or testing new strategies with them.
These aren’t just one-and-done matches like normal, though. Instead, each player takes one of their decks into a round-based battle where they start with 10 health. Whoever loses each round will also lose health equal to the Cube Value. This keeps going until one player runs out of health, with higher Cube Value stakes from Round Five and onwards, ensuring that Friendly Battle retains the speediness of the default game mode. The health-based setup is an enjoyable variation of Marvel Snap’s core formula.
It gives another purpose to snapping during a match outside of account progression. Meanwhile, the round-based setup allows players to stretch their strategic muscles as they adapt to each new round, finding the opposing deck’s weaknesses and trying to avoid their own. Plus, even when I was joining games using codes players posted on Marvel Snap’s Discord, there was a greater sense of community in discovering what decks other players were using and communicating with my opponent more via the in-game messages and emotes.

Seeing the strengths of Friendly Battle mode, it has become evident what elements of the game the developers need to focus on and expand going forward.
Setting a precedent
Looking at games like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone, their communities are what have allowed those card games to stand the test of time. Marvel Snap may be just as good as those from a gameplay standpoint, but it needs interested players to continue supporting it over the long term if it wants to be more than the mobile gaming fad. With players getting increasingly mad at its microtransactions and progression, it is a critical time to renew interest.
Friendly Battle is an excellent first step for that. This new mode finally gives Marvel Snap players a more direct way to connect and potentially set up tournaments that can keep the competitive scene alive. Second Dinner still needs to add more social features in-game, though. Second Dinner teased that it considering the addition of Player Guilds last year, and being able to join a Guild or at least Friend another player’s account would encourage players to stick around and play and socialize with their friends more.
Being able to trade cards with other players is a feature I’d like to see because of how odd Marvel Snap’s progression is. For something like that to work, though, Guilds or an account friending system are necessary prior additions. The necessity of a dedicated social community of players also means that the developers must add more new modes so veterans have a reason to stick around and new players have new reasons to join.

Gaming

Tomb Raider returns as a mobile roguelike via Netflix

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Tomb Raider Reloaded, a roguelike mobile game based on Crystal Dynamics' long-running series, has been unveiled ahead of its release on iOS, Android, and Netflix on February 14.
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Tomb Raider Reloaded is a top-down action game where players control Lara Croft. She'll go from room to room, defeating enemies and solving puzzles in each one. In typical roguelike fashion, Croft will get more powerful over time as players level up, obtain XP modifiers, find stat-boosting Runes and Perks, and craft weapons and outfits. Lara will be voiced by Keeley Hawes, who portrayed her in games like Tomb Raider: Anniversary and Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, rather than Camilla Luddington, who played Lara Croft in Crystal Dynamics' rebooted trilogy.
This announcement comes on the heels of Amazon making a large investment in the Tomb Raider franchise. Amazon Game Studios will publish the Unreal Engine 5-powered Tomb Raider game in development at Crystal Dynamics and is developing TV shows and movies connected to the game. Amazon is not involved with the release of this mobile game, though, as developer Emerald City Games and Embracer Group-owned publisher CDE Entertainment are handling it. Regardless, 2023 has been the busiest year for Lara Croft in a while.
The game will be available normally on iOS and Android, but Netflix subscribers can also download a version of the game that doesn't have any in-game ads or microtransactions. The release of Tomb Raider Reloaded will come right on the heels of the launch of Valiant Hearts: Coming Home, another Netflix mobile game based on a notable console game.

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With Valiant Hearts: Coming Home, Netflix finds its video game voice

The playable characters of Valiant Hearts: Coming Home all standing together.

As we are in the earliest stages of Netflix’s foray into the games, the company is still trying to discover what a “Netflix game” really feels like. We’ve seen ports of fun console beat ’em ups and enjoyable puzzle games, but I don't feel that those really define the platform’s emerging identity. Valiant Hearts: Coming Home, on the other hand, does. A sequel to a 2014 narrative adventure game set during World War I, it's a thoughtful and emotional journey that naturally reflects some of the film and TV content available on Netflix.
Valiant Hearts: Coming Home | Official Teaser Trailer | Netflix
It’s both highly educational and a solid sequel to one of Ubisoft’s most underrated games. Like Before Your Eyes, narrative is a clear priority, as is the distinct visual style that would work even if this was a traditional animated show. Netflix is known for evolving prestige TV and defining what storytelling in a streaming-focused series could be, so it would benefit from giving its exclusive games a similar focus. Valiant Hearts: Coming Home might not be a perfect game, but it’s a solid example of what a premier Netflix game could look like in the future.
War stories
Valiant Hearts: Coming Home, like its predecessor Valiant Hearts: The Great War, is a narrative-focused adventure game that hops between several stories from soldiers (and a medic) who served during World War I. Familiarity with the first game is helpful, as some characters reappear, but not necessary as the sequel tells a new story mainly focused on the Harlem Hellfighters, a group that fought with the French after the U.S. joined the conflict. It’s a story about the horrors of war and the family and friendships that wither through it all that focuses more on human stories rather than the bloody combat that games typically like to highlight.
While its story doesn’t feel quite as intertwined as The Great War’s, Coming Home is still enlightening, shining light on parts of the war that aren’t typically covered in your standard history class. I’d even recommend it as a good entry point for kids learning about World War I, especially because the game features plenty of collectible objects and facts that allow players to learn more about the battle. Like the best content on Netflix, it’s a creatively rich and additive experience.
It does all that with a minimalist style, as its characters speak in pantomime, only saying a word or two as a narrator eventually cuts in to fill in narrative blanks or give context on the state of the war. While it might seem disrespectful to represent such a brutal war in a cartoonish manner, the horrific moments stand out all the more clearly as a result. One particularly memorable set piece doesn’t contain any dialogue. It has the player walking across the bottom of the sea as you see bodies and ships from the Battle of Jutland sink to the seafloor. It’s equally awe-inspiring and horrifying, bolstered by Coming Home’s distinct visual style.

The gorgeous 2D art is colorful, looks hand-drawn, and almost feels kid-friendly despite how grave the subject matter it’s portraying is. Netflix is home to some great animation, so it would also make sense for that artistry to apply to its games. On the gameplay front, Coming Home is comparatively simple. Players use touch controls to easily walk around, climb, and interact with objects throughout the game to solve simple puzzles. Occasionally, some minigames with unique mechanics, like treating and patching up soldiers’ wounds, spice up the game. It is approachable in design and never particularly complicated, but that also means the gameplay never gets in the way of its storytelling and art.
The biggest downside to is that it’s regularly interrupted by loading screens. Even though they were very brief on my Google Pixel 7XL, they dampened some scenes’ artistic and emotional flow.
What makes a Netflix game?
Valiant Hearts: Coming Home is a beautiful narrative-focused game that feelsat home on Netflix. It demonstrates how titles with compelling stories can be just as engaging on a phone as they are on PC and consoles. That mentality is a perfect match for a platform that made a name for itself mostly through serialized, story-driven TV shows and movies, and now also offers games with strong stories like Desta: The Memories Between, Before Your Eyes, and Immortality.