Confession: I own Splatoon 3 and I’ve barely touched Turf War. The online mode everyone buys Splatoon for stresses me out. Salmon Run and the single-player campaign? Those I played to death.
Turns out Nintendo built an entire game for people like me. Splatoon Raiders lands July 23 as a Switch 2 exclusive, and it’s the first Splatoon with no competitive multiplayer at all. No lobbies full of teenagers with inhuman reflexes. Just you, three chaotic idols, and islands full of treasure.
I’ve read every preview and watched the June 30 Direct twice. Here’s the adult-brain breakdown before launch day.
What It Actually Is
You play a mechanic (create your own Inkling or Octoling) hired by Deep Cut, the musician trio from Splatoon 3, to hunt treasure on the Spirhalite Islands. The helicopter goes down, you’re stranded, and the expedition becomes part treasure hunt, part way home.
Structurally, this is a loot game wearing Splatoon’s clothes. Previewers keep reaching for the same comparisons: the raid-and-return loop of Monster Hunter, the loot chase of Destiny. You head out on a raid, splat waves of Salmonids, grab weapons and salvage, then come back to your hideout ship to upgrade and go again. IGN’s preview called it “kind of a roguelite with persistent progression.”
There are over 100 weapons, and they drop from enemies with random perks and abilities. Buildcrafting in a Splatoon game. Polygon liked the tinkering so much they predicted it’ll shape Splatoon 4.
One Deep Cut member rides along on every raid in a companion bot, each with their own special attack. Shiver’s summons a giant rocket-powered shark. I don’t have a joke here. It’s a rocket shark. Sometimes Nintendo just wins.
The Details That Matter If You’re Over 30
You keep everything, even when you lose. Get wiped mid-raid and your weapons and salvage come home with you anyway. No lost progress, no punishing corpse runs. For anyone whose sessions end when a toddler wakes up or a work email lands, this is the single most important design choice in the game.
Difficulty doesn’t gate the loot. Three modes: Tourist, Raider, and Survivalist. They change the combat challenge only. Playing on Tourist gets you the same treasure as the sweats get. No guilt, no second-class rewards.
Sessions are raid-sized. The loop is built around discrete missions with variety between them: wave defense on a giant drill, weapon-specific challenge runs, open islands to poke around. This is a game you can make real progress in between 8:30 and 9:15 PM.
It’s approachable on purpose. Previews from people who bounced off Splatoon 3’s content sprawl called this a friendlier entry point. If you’ve never played a Splatoon game, this is now the place to start.
The Catch: Read This Before Buying Two Copies
Raiders supports co-op for up to four players, and the difficulty scales to your group size, which is great. But there is no split-screen. Co-op runs online or over local wireless only, meaning two people in the same house need two Switch 2 consoles and two copies.
For couples and families hoping this would be the next couch game, that’s a real disappointment, and you should know it before launch day. It’s a single-player game first, with friends as a bonus. If shared-couch gaming is what you’re shopping for, our co-op picks that don’t need a second console has you covered instead.
The other catch: Switch 2 exclusive means exactly that. It does not run on the original Switch. With the Switch 2 price jumping from $449 to $499 on September 1, anyone buying a console for this game has a genuine deadline. More on that in a piece later this month.
Price, Editions, and the Freebies Around It
The game runs $49.99 digital or $59.99 physical. That $10 gap is Nintendo charging for the cartridge, and it’s becoming standard. Annoying, but at least the game itself came in under the $70 line.
No deluxe editions, no season pass announced, no battle pass. A complete game at one price. In 2026 that sentence reads like a love letter.
The surrounding stuff, if you’re the type: three Raiders-themed amiibo (Shiver, Frye, Big Man) launch the same day and unlock outfit cosmetics, plus new Deep Cut Joy-Con 2 colors. Nintendo has been running daily prologue comics on the Nintendo Today app since June 23 if you want the story setup. All optional, none of it gates content.
What We Still Don’t Know
A few open questions the previews couldn’t answer, worth tracking before you commit:
Campaign length. Nintendo hasn’t said, and previewers only played slices. My guess based on the mission variety shown is 15 to 25 hours for the main path, but that’s a guess. Reviews will settle it.
How co-op loot works between friends. Whether guests keep their drops and progression from a friend’s raid or just the host benefits hasn’t been confirmed. If you’re planning to play alongside a buddy long-term, wait for that answer.
Post-launch support. No season pass is a feature, but Splatoon games historically get free content updates for years. Nintendo hasn’t committed either way for Raiders.
Review scores. The embargo should lift right around launch. If this article is more than a few days old when you read it, the scores are out. Go check them, then come back.
Should You Buy It Day One?
The preview wave was unusually warm. Outlets that got hands-on time came away praising the variety, the loot loop, and the visual jump on Switch 2 hardware. That’s a good sign, but previews are curated slices. Full reviews land around launch, and the two questions they’ll answer are campaign length and whether the loop stays fresh past hour ten.
My honest read for TAG readers:
Buy day one if you loved Salmon Run or Splatoon’s campaigns, or you’ve got a Switch 2 hungry for exclusives. Everything shown points at your exact taste.
Wait a week if you’re loot-loop skeptical. Repetition complaints show up fast in reviews when they’re real, and the game costs the same on August 1.
Skip if you only ever cared about competitive Turf War. There’s none of it here, and that’s the whole point.
I’ll be playing at launch, on Tourist mode, without a shred of shame. Verdict coming once I’ve put real hours in. The rocket shark and I have business.
Grabbing Raiders day one or waiting on reviews? Call it in the TAG Discord. And if you’re still deciding whether a Switch 2 earns a spot in your house before the price hike, our Switch 2 vs Steam Deck OLED breakdown does the math.
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