This Week on Pocket Gamer

Each week we provide a round-up of the key talking points of the past week or so of portable gaming from our sister website, Pocket Gamer.

From the hottest iPhone and Android games to the latest developments from Nintendo HQ, the PG team tend to have it covered.

Last week was a little quieter than normal, though, and we’ll start with one possible explanation for that…

Steel Media get-together

Last Monday and Tuesday saw the annual meet-up for many of Steel Media’s (that’s the parent company for 148Apps and Pocket Gamer) European staff. This included pretty much the entire PG editorial team, which explains why the week got off to a slightly sluggish start.

It was well worth it, though, as the Pocket Gamer crew took the opportunity to thrash out some exciting new ideas for the future of the site.

There are some fairly radical changes in the pipeline, which we’re not quite ready to talk about just yet. Suffice to say that if you have any interest in mobile or portable gaming (and we know that you probably do), you should definitely watch this space.

Pokémon goes again

That’s not to say that the week was completely free of incident. Far from it. Indeed, we saw the release of a brand new mobile Pokémon game called Pokémon Duel.

It’s quite a departure from last year’s smash hit of the year, Pokémon GO. This time you’re employing those collectible critters in a tactical multiplayer boardgame.

There’s a lot of promise here, but sadly the PG team found the game to be barely playable in its current state. Poor server performance has been leading to lengthy delays and the frequent inability to access games.

It’s a bit broken right now, but when you do manage to get a game there’s ample fun to be had. Towards the end of the week, PG even provided a breakdown of some of the first Pokémonfigures you can buy in the early stages of the game.

Game announcements

Last week provided plenty to look forward to on the mobile gaming front. One highlight was the announcement of a new side-scrolling skateboarding game called Skate City. It’s being co-developed by the team behind Alto’s Adventure, so you know it’s going to be beautiful in every sense of the word.

Elsewhere we received the welcome news that The Banner Saga 3. has hit Kickstarter. Like us, the PocketGamer crew absolutely loved the first two Norse-inflected RPG games in the series.

This will be the third and final entry, so we’re thrilled that there’s going to be a proper resolution to one of the finest mobile sagas of recent times.

Nintendo Switch update

If you’ve been following PocketGamer through January, you’ll know that the team is rather excited by the prospect of the Nintendo Switch console - to put it mildly. This hybrid console promises to bring the worlds of home console and portable gaming together in beautiful harmony.

In truth, this was the first week for some time in which we didn’t receive some major piece of Switch news. However, one small announcement served to flesh out the console’s somewhat spartan launch roster - which had appeared to be one of the glaring issues with the console.

World of Goo, Little Inferno, and Human Resource Machine from Tomorrow Corporation will be coming to Switch for its March 3 launch. Hardly massive titles, any of them, but they should fill the time between those epic Zelda sessions admirably.