Hakoniwa Explorer Plus and One Way Heroics Plus Coming to Switch June 18

Playism announced both Hakoniwa Explorer Plus and One Way Heroics Plus will be launching on the Switch Nintendo Eshop on June 18. Both games will be available in English, seeing the PC versions available on Playism support English. Both games were also featured at the Indie Live Expo 2020 event, be sure to check our news roundup. Let’s take a look at both games now.

Hakoniwa Explorer Plus on Switch

Hakoniwa Explorer Plus is an action RPG with a 2D isometric view and voxel art graphics. There’s a 2D isometric world map with various cities, dungeons, and locations you need to explore. Most of the monsters in the game are monster girls, who try to kill and eat your protagonist. It’s pretty tongue-in-cheek and never takes itself seriously. The game’s first town is called “FirstTown” and there’s a guide character wearing a school swimsuit called “Sukumizu”.

Personally speaking, as I played the game on PC, I’d say the only “flaw” is how it’s pretty short, and you can finish the main story along with the two bonus dungeons in probably less than 15 hours. Hakoniwa Explorer Plus’ definitely a great game though. Don’t judge by the cover and think it solely relies on monster girl sexual fanservice with no substance in gameplay. Even the story itself is actually pretty nice.

One thing I won’t forget is how when starting a new game, it asks you to pick your gender between “male” “female” or “Other”. If I remember correctly, when you pick “other”, the game tells you that they sadly didn’t have the resources to make more than two playable characters models, and to please pick the one you’re the most comfortable with. I thought it was sweet of the game’s sole developer, Suxa (suxamethonium), to do that, and important to point out there might be a lot of vocal bigots who enjoy these kind of sexual fanservice games on social media nowadays, it’s unfair to believe the people who make the games aren’t great folks.

Hakoniwa Explorer Plus is a pretty nice experience. Another noteworthy point are the giant monster girls as bosses, which can be genuinely menacing and kinda gross with their wriggling movements, unless you have a monster girl vore fetish. I’ve heard the original game on PC did a small sensation on Japanese twitter back when it released, but Hakoniwa is actually not that risqué. Speaking of which, with the Switch port reveal, I’ve seen dozens of tweets in Japanese being surprised this game is getting on the supposedly family-friendly Switch.

I’m personally not surprised as Nintendo has been trying to remove its kids only image for decades now. Resident Evil 4 was originally a Gamecube exclusive. And then you have dozens of strip mahjong games on the Switch Eshop, sexual fanservice games like LoveR Kiss., etc. Anyway. Here are additional details from the press release:

An action RPG about getting beaten down, wrapped up, hip-checked, blood-sucked, and straight-up eaten by cute female monsters.

Shacked up in an empty house in the Firsttown suburbs, our hero has a thing for taking down monsters. Talk to the townspeople to expand your field of exploration and freely traverse the land as you like.
However you want to proceed, and however you want to take the monsters down is all up to you. Defeat the bosses awaiting you in each region and rack up the achievements for a little something special… The roster of lethal monsters include such superstars as the pervy “Rockit”, who’ll melt the threads of your clothes in all the right places.
and “Dryad”, who attacks by wrapping you up in her legs. Together with “Sukumizu”, your random guidance-dispensing partner in adventure, make your way through a variety of dungeons in this wiggly, weird dot-style 1/4-view world.

Features:
・The main character is basically an unemployed hobo. You can select their gender.
・All kinds of weapons are at your disposal: swords, axes, claws, staves, and bows & arrows. They also break down for like, no reason.
Somehow make do with the crappy weapons and tools of your choice and use them to take down your enemies.
・Take your pick from a wide variety of “swimwear”, including swimwear actually used for swimming, swimwear that’s just for show, etc.
・Most of the monsters are soft, cute, sadistic girls.
・You can totally touch their butts.

The game is much better than what the description makes it sound like.

One Way Heroics Plus on Switch

One Way Heroics Plus is a classic 2D top-down view RPG, but with a twist: you need to keep moving right to avoid being swallowed by the darkness and die. And it’s permadeath.

If you’d like to hear my Unneeded Opinion tm on this game, I have none, as I haven’t tried it in the past. The Switch’s portability is a great occasion to grab the game though. One Way Heroics Plus was developed by SmokingWOLF, who has never smoked before. Here’s the full details from the press release:

One Way Heroics Plus, a forced side scroll RPG game where you must keep moving right in order to escape the darkness that continuously swallows the map!

A world controlled by darkness.
In game, the darkness constantly advances from the left side of the screen, swallowing up the map.
If you are swallowed by the darkness, it’s game over. You cannot turn back.
The screen will continue to scroll right even while shopping or fighting enemies. You must keep advancing and save the world. In One Way Heroics, if the player moves or attacks enemies will do the same.
In essence, it is a rogue-like game.
To clear the game, you must defeat the Demon Lord, who will appear after a set time.One round is around 30 minutes play time, and some parts of your legend carry over into the next round.
See if you can overcome the challenges of this one way adventure.

Features:
・A definitive edition, including features from both One Way Heroics and One Way Heroics Plus, brought to Nintendo Switch.
・Controls optimized for Nintendo Switch.
・Eleven classes to choose from for your player character.
・Allies and NPC’s which aid your character.
・Over 260 items.
・9 different endings.
・Replay function to play back your adventures.