Nintendo’s eighth-generation game console is generally thought to have been a disaster; the Wii U struggled to surpass 12 million sales during its life cycle and was hindered by a lack of first and third-party support. That said, one indie developer isn’t giving up on the Wii U and is planning to debut a new digital title on the platform this month.
Pad of Time is an upcoming Wii U 2.5D platformer that boasts a cutesy, cartoonish art style that’s somewhat reminiscent of the Paper Mario series. What at first glance comes across as a fairly standard platformer is boosted by its titular mechanic which allows players to switch between three separate time periods on the fly. While that’s not necessarily a new mechanic—titles like Singularity and Braid may spring to mind—it’s an interesting wrinkle capable of transforming an otherwise simple game into something more complex.
Though the gameplay looks to be engaging, Pad of Time’s primary claim to fame seems likely to be its potential status as one of the final games to be released for the Wii U. Third-party support for the platform had always been relatively lackluster and dried up fairly quickly after the debut of the Nintendo Switch in 2017. However, the system’s virtual console capabilities were widely lauded, and many fans still clamor for Nintendo to bring something more akin to the Wii U’s virtual console to the Nintendo Switch. With the general lack of support beyond retro games, the Wii U's digital ecosystem was never particularly promising for indie developers.
Of course, Pad of Time seems as if it were built with the console in mind. Just as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild seems to have been developed with the tablet-like tech of the Wii U and Nintendo Switch, Pad of Time was destined to be played on a pad. In fact, developer Markanime Studios released a video of the forthcoming game running on all sorts of pad-like devices from the Wii U and Nintendo Switch to Valve’s fast-selling Steam Deck device.
That’s an obvious indication that, while it will be a final or near-final farewell for the Wii U eShop, Pad of Time won’t be restricted to the fast-forgotten hardware. There’s still a chance that other titles will debut on the service, but, given that Nintendo has recently confirmed that the Wii U and 3DS eShops will be closing down in roughly one year’s time, it doesn’t seem likely that any other developers will venture to put their products on a soon-to-be-defunct platform.
Pad of Time launches for Nintendo Switch and Wii U on April 13.
Source: Nintendo Life
