Time to Switch it up: the Nintendo Switch games to play for escapism

Got your hands on a coveted Switch? From Mario Kart to Animal Crossing, it's time to get stuck in 
Kelly Sikkema / Unsplash

Get you a games console that can do both. Twice as many Nintendo Switches were sold worldwide this March than were shifted in the same month last year (thanks, lockdown).

And no wonder: it’s a delight to play on the TV — fun for all the family with great games and multiplayer options — and the console, if and when you are kicked off the telly, enjoys a useful side-hustle as a handheld device you can hole up with elsewhere in the house.

Or, from this week, the park!

So, given that you now have freedom to sit on a park bench, alone and undisturbed, here are four of the best games to enjoy, from classic fun franchises to engrossing brain-testers...

Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Nintendo

USP: A visual feast. The latest in the Zelda franchise — which, to the uninitiated, generally follows a small elf boy clad in green trying to save the fairytale land of Hyrule from peril — looks and sounds fantastic, rendered in painterly style and scored by an orchestra.

Perhaps most excitingly, you are free to roam as you please, whacking goblins on the head with wooden sticks, shooting the breeze with bird-people or jumping up waterfalls with anthropomorphic fish. Or you can simply roast apples over an open fire as the sun sets. Nice.

Best for: solo wilderness explorers

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Live your best life in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Nintendo

USP: The surprise hit of lockdown life. Players build a home and converse, to varying degrees of import, with a community of adorable cartoon characters who live on a tropical island, performing the kind of menial tasks that have been rebranded in today’s age as mindful: chopping wood, catching fish, and cooking.

A functioning economy also exists in this fantasy land, which is a welcome relief. Quotidien bliss. It’s like the Sims, only with less scope for ­murdering your creations.

Best for: community spirits

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Mario Kart (Nintendo)

USP: For anyone who’s been missing the open road, the latest Mario Kart is a cathartic exercise featuring all the things you wish you could do on four wheels: lob green tortoise shells and slipper bananas at anyone who dares overtake you on the South Circular.

London’s grimy streets are replaced by cloud-top castles, pirate ships and a child’s bedroom. Having more than one player increases the fun.

Best for: fantasy F1 drivers

Return of the Obra Dinn

The Return of the Obra Dinn is a murder mystery of enormous proportion
Lucas Pope

USP: Do not let the black-and-white, granular display disaffect you from this independently made puzzle masterpiece — it’s all part of the charm.

The player, an auditor, has been dispatched to a mysterious 19th-century ghost ship, the Obra Dinn, on which all the passengers have disappeared. In what amounts to a murder mystery of enormous proportions, they must diligently establish what went down, working out who, how and at who’s hand every soul aboard was dispatched.

It’s a tricky thinker and immensely satisfying.

Best for: amateur sleuths

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