Tozai Games, the Seattle-area game developer, is bringing its action-puzzle game Lode Runner Legacy, the most recent installment in the long-running Lode Runner series, to the Nintendo Switch.
When it came out on Steam last summer, Legacy was the first entry in the series in five years, and was chosen for a full-fledged release via the Steam Greenlight program. It’s an update and nod to the classic Lode Runner, where your challenge is to collect all the gold in each maze and escape, avoiding the traps and monsters along the way. You have the ability to destroy parts of the level, which you can use to delay or trap your opposition, as well as dig more treasure out of the bricks.
The game currently contains four separate modes of play, such as Classic Mode, which contains 150 levels based upon past Lode Runner games, and Puzzle Mode, which omits the enemies in each stage. You can also build a variety of your own stages and characters in Craft Mode, which lets you share your creations online and download new levels from other players.
The original Lode Runner was created in 1983 by the late Douglas Smith, who was then a student of architecture at the University of Washington. He built the game in assembly language on an Apple II, and eventually took a deal with Brøderbund to publish it on early computers like the Commodore 64. Lode Runner was a sales success, as well as one of the first games to ship with a built-in level editor, enabling players to create and share their own custom stages. Smith would go on to work on landmark games like Secret of Evermore and Secret of Mana before passing away in 2014.
Lode Runner went on to become the start of a small, long-running franchise. High-profile studios such as Hudson Soft, Irem, Psikyo, and even Nintendo released various games for arcades and consoles under the Lode Runner name, many of which were never released outside of Japan.
Lode Runner Legacy is slated to be available for digital purchase on Nintendo’s eShop this spring.
