A couple of years ago, Square Enix began The Square Enix Collective, a service to assist indie developers with creating games that would ultimately be published by the company. As part of The Square Enix Collective, the company listened to pitches from different studios regarding its dormant IP like Gex and Fear Effect, resulting in an official and successful Kickstarter campaign for a Fear Effect revival called Fear Effect Sedna, which now has a release window.

As announced by the official Fear Effect Twitter account, Fear Effect Sedna will launch for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in early 2018. The announcement of a Nintendo Switch version of Fear Effect Sedna is somewhat surprising, especially since the console had yet to be revealed by Nintendo at the time of the game's Kickstarter campaign.

Nintendo Switch owners that are now interested in the project should know that Fear Effect Sedna is a brand new game set in the Fear Effect universe, from French indie developer Sushee. Whereas the original Fear Effect games were action-adventure shooters with survival-horror elements, however, Fear Effect Sedna is a top-down real-time strategy game, so it will be a rather significant departure from series norms.

New Fear Effect Game Coming to Nintendo Switch - Hana Tsu-Vachel

While the change in gameplay style may turn off longtime fans of the franchise, Fear Effect Sedna will retain the franchise's cel-shaded art style and characters. Those that can't get over Fear Effect Sedna's RTS gameplay will still have something to look forward to in 2018, however, as Sushee plans on releasing a remake of the original game called Fear Effect Reinvented for the same platforms.

By bringing Fear Effect Reinvented and Fear Effect Sedna to the Nintendo Switch, Square Enix is proving that it is serious about supporting the console. If the new Fear Effect games do well on the platform, then perhaps Square Enix will be convinced to bring over some more games, though it's worth noting that the console may not be powerful enough to run its bigger projects, as indicated by Final Fantasy 15 director Hajime Tabata.

While having more Square Enix games on the Switch would be nice, bringing both new Fear Effect games to Nintendo's handheld/console hybrid is a good start. Hopefully the games live up to fan expectations, and we have a full-blown franchise revival on our hands when they release next year.

Fear Effect Sedna will launch in early 2018 for Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One.