After months of silence, Nintendo brought Splatoon 3’s DLC Side Order back out for the September Direct and teased a roguelike element. Side Order takes place in an alternate realm devoid of color – but rocking some pretty slick techno vibes anyway – and while we don’t know what the narrative premise is behind it, the trailer suggests your goal is restoring color.
Or maybe it’s just splatting robotic-looking otherworldly sea critters. Either way, you, Agent Eight, meet with new character Acht – “eight” in German – and get a range of color chips you can slot into a fancy computer system to augment your ink. It’s not just your ink color, either. Different color chips boost your stats in different ways.
Nintendo didn’t go into detail about Side Order, but they did say it’s designed “to be replayed over and over.” Between that and the different, possibly random, power-ups, it sounds a lot like a roguelike.
There’s plenty of Splatoon lore in the mix as well. You, Eight, have a sassy robot companion, and Acht apparently knows Pearl from Splatoon 2. You go it alone in Side Order, though. As Nintendo previously said, the Splatoon 3 DLC is a single-player campaign – no online multiplayer this time.
We still have a while to see how it all fits together, though. Splatoon 3’s Side Order DLC launches on Nintendo Switch sometime in spring 2024.
