Publisher Kitfox Games has announced that Caves of Qud will finally release on the Nintendo Switch this month on 16th February 2026.
The title has been a long time coming – 17 years in the making, to be precise – so the recent delays on Switch have felt pretty trivial, thankfully. Toward the end of January, Kitfox stated that the release would likely slip into February as it was awaiting final approval. That's now seemingly happened, and everything is a-go for the 16th.
For those unaware, Caves of Qud is a roguelike RPG developed by Freehold Games. It's received critical acclaim on other platforms for its deep systems, emergent gameplay, and freedom of choice. We're really excited to dive into this one when it launches next month, but if you need a bit more of an overview, here's the official breakdown of key features:
Watch on YouTubeSubscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube842k
- Deep Physical Simulation – Don’t like the wall blocking your way? Dig through it with a pickaxe, or eat through it with your corrosive gas mutation, or melt it to lava. Yes, every wall has a melting point.
- Fully Simulated Creatures – Every monster and NPC is as fully simulated as the player. That means they have levels, skills, equipment, faction allegiances, and body parts. So if you have a mutation that lets you, say, psionically dominate a spider, you can traipse through the world as a spider, laying webs and eating things.
- Dynamic Faction System – Pursue allegiances with over 70 factions: apes, crabs, trees, robots, and highly entropic beings, just to name a few.
- Richly Detailed Science Fantasy Setting – Over fifteen years of worldbuilding have led to a rich, weird, labyrinthine, one-of-a-kind storyworld, layered on top of the simulation, all for you to explore. Live and drink, friend.
- Tactical Gameplay – Turn-based, sandbox exploration and combat offers as many solutions as you and your mutations, implants, artifacts, and skills are creative enough to invent.
- RPG Elements – Quests, NPCs, villages, historic sites; some dynamic and some handwritten, interwoven to produce a transportative RPG experience.
- Atmospheric Original Soundtrack – Over two hours of otherworldly music to delve to.