Ark: Survival Evolved gets a November release date on Switch
Diplodockus.
Studio Wildcard has announced the Switch version of its popular dinosaur-themed survival escapade, Ark: Survival Evolved, will launch on November 30th.
Ark on Switch, which was surprise-revealed back in March, has been developed in conjunction with porting studio Abstraction Games, and promises to deliver an authentic take on Wildcard's open-world survival adventure - albeit one that you can play on the go and perhaps even on a dinosaur if you know any.
The Switch version features Ark's original Island map and includes over 100 creatures. Some of these are inspired by actual prehistoric fauna, from the mighty T. rex to the Giganotosaurus, while others, such as the yeti, are pure fantasy fare. Many of these can be tamed, ridden, bred, or simply just murdered and eaten. Don't mess with the Giganotosaurus though, it's mean.
It's not entirely clear if every one of Ark's core systems has made it over to Switch, but Wildcard does note that hunting, harvesting, crafting, farming, and base building have all made the cut - as has the late-game Ascendancy stuff, including T. rexes that can shoot laser beams out of their foreheads. In other words, the list sounds pretty exhaustive.
Wildcard says that it's possible to "team up with hundreds of players online", and there's a solo mode too, for those that exist beyond the internet, or simply don't want to suffer the indignity of finding their hard work turned into mush and rubble whenever they log back in.
As someone who's accrued many, many (many) hours on Ark in the past, I'm certainly intrigued to see how it translates to Switch. Ark notoriously struggled to run in anything like a consistent manner on much more powerful hardware, so quite how Nintendo's machine will cope without evaporating in a cloud of defeat remains to be seen.
According to Wildcard, Ark: Survival Evolved will cost $49.99 (around £40) when it launches on Switch on 30th November.