“The merciless survival roguelite turn-based city builder” is coming to Nintendo Switch next month after earning 95% positive reviews on Steam

Dotage (stylized dotAGE), one of the biggest surprise indie hits of last year, is coming to Nintendo Switch on October 24. After nine years in development, it released last October on PC to unanimous praise.

Watching Dotage exceed the expectations of Italy-based developer Michele Pirovano has been a real joy. We chatted with the indie dev back in December, and he told us he expected Dotage to “maybe sell some 100 copies”, and with 20,000 copies sold at the time (obviously much more today), Pirovano was elated. 

“It was my dream – actually, not even my dream, because I’m quite a risk-averse guy and I have my feet on the ground,” he said of the game’s runaway launch. “So I was not thinking it would be good. So when it did that, it was very, very exhilarating. It was perfect for me – for a week. And then I realized how much work keeping up with so many players would be.”

Dotage’s upcoming Switch launch is yet another important marker of the game’s surprise success, as well as a certain boon for overall sales. It’s billed as a “merciless survival roguelite turn-based city builder,” and that’s pretty dang accurate by all accounts.

You play as a bearded village elder who leads his fellow villagers in the charge to survive the apocalypse, which belies the vibrant color palette and adorable pixel character models. Taking up that daunting task means you’ll need to manage your community, assign workers to various tasks, and expand your village.  “Grow crops, herd animals, bury corpses, forge tools, upgrade buildings, train professionals, and produce dozens of resources,” reads the Steam description.

As for the roguelite element, that comes in every time your village inevitably goes under and your Elder remembers lost memories, thereby bringing “new ailments, the mysterious VIPS, new Elders,” and more into the mix. Then there are “forces that govern your world,” including disease, earthquakes, and, thank goodness, non-violent invaders like kittens, presumably just to keep the hope alive.

Here are all of the upcoming indie games to keep on your radar.

After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar’s west coast Staff Writer, I’m responsible for managing the site’s western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I’m too afraid to finish.