Protect your cores portably: ‘Defense Grid 2’ is coming to Nintendo Switch next month

Hidden Path Entertainment, headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., announced on Wednesday that it will release a remastered edition of Defense Grid 2 on the Nintendo Switch on February 7th.

Defense Grid 2 is a “tower defense” game, where players must protect vulnerable assets from enemy attack by setting up layers of fortifications, obstacles, and automated weapon systems. You rarely if ever take direct offensive action. Instead, you build up a potentially elaborate series of defenses that slow, stop, redirect, or destroy the enemy’s onslaught.

In DG2 in particular, your goal is to keep hordes of invading aliens away from your outposts. You can set up systems that shoot down, reroute, block, or slowly whittle away at the advancing aliens before they’re able to reach, grab, and escape with the floating cores that power your defenses. The game features “couch co-op” on the Switch, with each player using a Joy-Con controller.

We are excited to announce that Defense Grid 2 is coming to the Nintendo Switch on February 7th!
Head over to our Blog to read all the details!https://t.co/KPEDqUoPW1#NintendoSwitch #TowerDefense #DG2 #DefendTheCores

— Hidden Path Ent (@HiddenPathEnt) January 16, 2019

In its press release, Hidden Path wrote that the Switch port “marks two longtime dreams our team has had: to bring you a Defense Grid game you can take on the go, and offering the game on a Nintendo console.”

In 2013 through 2014, the making of Defense Grid 2 was chronicled by Russ Pitts in a series for Polygon, beginning from its earliest planning stages. The game was initially funded via a successful Kickstarter campaign, but when that proved insufficient, an angel investor came aboard to bring the game closer to completion. The result, in 2014, was critically and commercially successful, and led to a VR port two years later.

The 2019 Defense Grid 2 features the original 26-mission campaign, as well as Aftermath, an additional chapter with five extra missions that was formerly exclusive to the game’s VR release. As with the other versions, it will ship with platform-specific leaderboards, which let you track your performance on each stage against other members of the game’s Switch community.

Hidden Path Entertainment was founded in 2006 by a group of ex-Microsoft developers, and made its debut with 2008’s Defense Grid: The Awakening. Its other releases include Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the updated 2013 Steam port of Age of Empires II, and last year, the real-time strategy VR game Brass Tactics.

Defense Grid 2 will be available digitally for $19.99 via the Nintendo eShop, and those who pre-order the game will receive a 10% discount. DG2 is also available via Steam for Windows, Linux, and OS X; on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One via both consoles’ online marketplaces; and has been released for virtual reality on the Oculus Rift and Samsung GearVR.