Splatoon Raiders feels like the single-player spin-off my family has been waiting for

It’s a strange thing to say about a series with 30 million sales to its name, but it feels like Splatoon has yet to truly explode in popularity among certain circles.

Japan certainly isn’t one of these circles. When Splatoon 3 was released in 2022, it sold 3.45 million copies in its first three days in Japan alone, making it the fastest-selling game ever in that country at that point.

Indeed, visit any of the Nintendo Store locations in Tokyo, Osaka or Nintendo’s home city of Kyoto, and you’ll see that the big four tentpole IPs there are Mario, Zelda, Animal Crossing and Splatoon (Pokémon has its own shop, of course), so it’s clear that in its native country it’s a huge asset for Nintendo.

While it’s still popular in the West, it’s fair to say it hasn’t had quite the same impact here. Of Splatoon 3’s 11.9 million sales as of March 2024, around 60% of these were in Japan alone, and while 4.8 million sales in the rest of the world are certainly nothing to sniff at, there’s still clearly an untapped market for this series outside of the East.

Nintendo will no doubt be hoping Splatoon Raiders will be the game to tap into this market, as it attempts to appeal to a new audience. As enjoyable as the Splatoon games are, they’re specifically targeted at those who prefer PvP online multiplayer. Splatoon 2 and 3 did at least have some single-player content, but this was generally considered a solo side order to the multiplayer main course – it was certainly difficult to recommend to anyone who didn’t want to touch PvP.

Splatoon Raiders goes in the opposite direction, ditching competitive multiplayer entirely and offering a new adventure that features many of the traits that make the series popular – its unique characters and style, its bizarre but compelling soundtrack, its enormous selection of weaponry – but repackaged in a single-player journey.

I recently went hands-on with some of the game’s earlier stages, and while in some ways my initial reaction was expected – it’s like the single-player bits in other Splatoon games, only bigger – there’s certainly been an effort made here to add more meat to this squid’s bones. Not that squids actually have bones, but that’s not the point.

The game puts you in the role of the mechanic of a crashed helicopter. The chopper, which was carrying the three-piece band Deep Cut, is wiped out by a hurricane, which causes a crash-landing in the Spirhalite Islands.

Using a base called the Hideout Ship as your main hub, the aim is to explore the Spirhalite Islands, uncovering more of the map over time by taking on new stages, and attempting to find as much of the islands’ treasure as possible.

Naturally, a lot of this involves shooting a load of enemies. The islands have conveniently been inhabited by the Salmonid creatures seen in Splatoon 2 and 3, with a bunch of new enemy types exclusive to Raiders, so each stage – at least of those I’ve played so far – involves following beacons to certain areas, clearing that area of Salmonids, then drilling into a crystal to retrieve crystal shards.

These shards are used to upgrade gadgets. You can customize your character’s gear with a selection of ink tanks and gadgets, which over time give you a bunch of abilities to choose from. There are three basic tanks at first – the Speed Tank, Power Tank and Tactical Tank – each of which lets you equip different gadgets.

The Power Tank, for example, lets you acquire the Splatchet, which lets you perform a powerful sliding attack followed by a huge swing of your weapon, doing big damage to anyone nearby. If you opt for the Tactical Tank instead, you can equip the Shot Pot – this throws a cooking pot-shaped turret ahead of you, which then expands and shoots at enemies.

You’re also accompanied on your travels by the Exploration Bot, a sort of clunky mini-mech thing that’s piloted by one of the three members of Deep Cut. Each member has their own special move (giving you an extra attack to use in the heat of battle), and the Bot gives other perks like the ability to drill the aforementioned crystals, and to act as a springboard to fire you up to higher areas.

The main takeaway I took from my first couple of hours with Splatoon Raiders is the increased focus on difficulty, and its attempt to reach a wider range of tastes in that regard.

As someone with an 8-year-old daughter who’s obsessed with the Splatoon characters and style – we absolutely rinsed the aforementioned Nintendo Tokyo store when we went there last summer – but who gets frustrated that she isn’t great at the main games, the fact that Splatoon Raiders now has a ‘Tourist’ difficulty level that makes things easier will appeal to players like her.

I’m sure I also can’t be the only parent iffy about having their young child play a game that’s primarily focused on online multiplayer. Even though the ink-splatting nature of the series means it’s far from the most violent thing around, for some that’s still a bit young to be interacting with strangers. What’s more, the fact that Splatoon 3’s plaza is filled with NPCs representing other players – many of whom have racy hand-drawn art that appear in speech bubbles as you walk past them – means I think I prefer the idea of my kid playing a single-player game in this universe she loves so much.

If you’re the sort of player who bleeds ink and the thought of ‘dumbing down’ the game with a Tourist difficulty mode is making you a bit twitchy, fret not – there are Raider (normal) and Survivalist difficulty levels in there too, which make battles harder.

“If you’re the sort of player who bleeds ink and the thought of ‘dumbing down’ the game with a Tourist difficulty mode is making you a bit twitchy, fret not – there are Raider (normal) and Survivalist difficulty levels in there too.”

Splatoon Raiders almost has a roguelite sensibility to it (with emphasis on the ‘lite’) in that it fully expects the player to fail multiple times. Experimentation with the right weapons and gadgets for each stage is crucial for success, and even if you die and fail a stage, the game will give you at least some XP so you can continue to get stronger with each attempt.

It’s the game’s multi-stage dungeon raids that really drove this home to me, however. These levels throw hordes of enemies at you and the aim is to collect a certain number of power eggs (by killing the enemies and collecting them) within a very tight time limit. Once you’ve cleared enough floors, you face that dungeon’s boss, which also has to be defeated within a similarly strict time limit.

I failed some of these numerous times, and was relieved to discover it wasn’t just me. Near the end of our session we were grouped into teams of four to try the game’s co-op multiplayer, and we still couldn’t clear a certain dungeon on the default difficulty after attempting it three times.

It’ll require more playing to determine whether this is a frustrating issue with the game or a deliberate example of a ‘try, fail, improve, try again, win’ structure. At this stage I’m leaning towards the latter, but time will tell whether this happens less over time, or even if the game’s quite short and this is an attempt to lengthen its duration. Watch this space.

For now though, I left the session itching to play more of Splatoon Raiders, and that’s generally a sign that it’s doing something right. As long as that initial hook continues throughout the course of the adventure, and as long as it continues to carefully walk that tightrope between challenge and frustration, this could just be that game needed to introduce Splatoon to a new single-player audience.