Bohemia Interactive, the development studio behind DayZ, is bringing its free-to-play shooter Vigor to the Nintendo Switch, after coming out last year on the Xbox One. The Switch version of the game entered a closed beta earlier this month, and fans can expect a full release of the title later in the year.
Set in a post-apocalypse Norway laid bare by a nuclear war, Vigor tasks its player characters, the Outlanders, with gathering loot, building shelter for themselves and fighting against each other in 8- to 12-player battle royale matches. Fans of the hardcore survival gameplay in DayZ will probably find something to like in Vigor, though the game's audience has remained relatively limited due to only launching on the Xbox One last August.
The Switch version of Vigor features cross-platform multiplayer with the Xbox One version of the game, and while the graphical detail has been lowered to get the game running on the Switch, the existing gameplay has been brought over to Nintendo's platform with little change made. The game is just one of several Xbox exclusives to make the jump, including Microsoft's own Ori and the Blind Forest, which runs better on the Switch than the original Xbox One release thanks to optimizations made since it came out in 2015.
Registration for the Switch beta is currently closed, but Bohemia Interactive released the Xbox version of Vigor for free last year, and has kept it updated regularly since. The game is currently in its third season of content, with an accompanying battle pass for players to unlock over the coming months and a charity gear pack benefiting the University Hospital Brno during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reception to the game from fans and critics has been mixed, but the Switch library is thin on releases like Vigor, and existing fans of the game on the Xbox One or Bohemia's previous work with the Arma games and DayZ will likely welcome the title's release on a platform they can play on the go.
Source: Bohemia Interactive