TheNintendo Switchwas an evolution for gaming when it first released as a system that could be portable and played on a big screen. This created a whole new way for developers to take advantage of a console. Blockbuster AAA companies and indie developers alike now had a system that would be able to take normally stationary games on the go, and that opened a lot of new business for Nintendo. TheNintendo Switchis a modern example of video game evolution, but it doesn’t have the same power as most gaming PCs or higher end consoles. This makes certain games much harder to run on the system, and that includes the recent port ofPathway.
Pathwayis a vibrant turn-based game that sees players put together a team of adventurers before they embark on one of five campaigns. While it released forPC in April 2019,Pathwayhas recently received a Switch Port that takes advantage of the game’s short burst playthroughs. Ahead of the game’s release onto the Switch, Game Rant was able to ask Simon and Stefan Bachmann some questions aboutPathway’s inspirations, mechanics, and the benefits and issues surrounding the Switch port. According to the Bachmann brothers, the Switch port almost didn’t happen due toPathway’s deceptively complex graphics system.
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Pathway’s Graphics
Pathway’s art style is a brightly-colored pixel art that also uses dynamic lighting and shadows to set the mood in each new environment. Setting the right tone was important for Robotality, and so they had to work on in-house tech to make sure that they could even achieve what they had sought out to do in the first place. Simon Bachmann describes it as an “experiment to answer a question” about what ways they could combine the lighting andthis vibrant pixel artto create a special kind of atmosphere. It took the devs a year of experimenting, but they finally got to make it work. However, the end result was more complicated on the hardware than expected. According to Simon,
“Having the possibility to work with a powerful fully dynamic light system helped immensely to make the different settings and moods look interesting and variable.”
Even after successfully getting the tech to work,Pathwaywould still go through a few design stages before Robotality decided to use the 1930s as the game’s setting. After that, they decided that the desert wilderness and tombs were a perfect way to show off the tech they had worked so hard to perfect. When using campfires andtorches as light sources, it really shows how hard the team worked at making the lighting look great.
How Pathway Almost Broke the Switch
During the interview, it was revealed thatPathwayand the Switch weren’t exactly the match made in Heaven that it appears to be. Despite the largely 2D appearance ofPathway’s gameplay, thedynamic lighting and shadowsthe game uses depend on rendering most of the game in 3D. In any scene, the game is pushing out hundreds of thousands of polygons to make the lighting and shadows look as well as it does. Stefan describes what it took to finally get the game running on the Switch as a “small miracle” but also how happy he was with how beautiful the final product looked:
“It took a lot of work (and some sacrificial offerings) to get it to run just how we wanted it to. But the game looks absolutely fantastic on the console, so it was definitely worth the time.”
Simon and Stefan Bachmann feel very passionately aboutPathwayand the tech advancements that they were able to make to achieve the game’s beautiful look. That being said, it took a fair amount of effort to find a way to get the game to run on the Nintendo Switch’s capabilities. With the rumors of theevolved Nintendo Switch Procoming sometime in the near future, developers will likely have less trouble getting games with higher-end systems likePathwayto run on the Switch.
Pathwayis available now on PC and Switch.
